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Prisons are designed to isolate, break social ties, and destroy communities. Yet, people fight hard to keep relationships going across prison walls, and through all the crises that prisons manufacture. Episode 26 is Part One of a multi-episode series on relating across prison walls. This episode features conversations with friends inside prison, people who have been released, and people who have been doing direct support to prisoners for decades, about the barriers to connection that prisons create and the ways people stay connected despite them. Topics include the way prison strains or distorts relationships, how to strengthen and repair relationships being stressed in these ways, dealing with unequal power dynamics in relationships, and adjusting to new relationship dynamics as someone comes out of prison.

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Support the podcast on Patreon

Become a Penpal
One of our hopes for making this episode is that more people will become penpals to prisoners. If you’re interested in becoming a penpal, find a chapter of Black and Pink near you, or check out other penpal programs: 

• Black & Pink
• Power Blossoms
• Abolitionist Mail Project
• Trans Pride Initiative
• Critical Resistance Prisoner Mail Program
• Flying Over Walls
• ARC Gender Justice

Links and Resources for this Episode

• Watch this full-length interview with Corey about feminist relationships across walls and more.
• If you want to reach out to Endjah, message Dean on Instagram, Patreon, or his website.
• Write to Donald Antonio Scott, 16317-067 USP Terre Haute, PO Box 33, Terre Haute, IN 47808
• Buy and read Eric King’s books, A Clean Hell and Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners. 
• Read more about Eric’s release here. 
• Read Endjah’s writing here. 
• Read more about Amber’s case here. 
• Read and support Daughters Magazine.

Share this Episode with Friends Inside
Interested in sharing this episode with friends inside? Some people might be able to find our podcast on their Kiosk system, but for those who can’t we suggest printing the transcript and mailing it in. Here it is in a format that takes up less pages to make printing cheaper and get through page limits:
8 page (smaller font) .docx / 10-page (larger font) .docx

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Morgan Bassichis is back talking gossip with Dean. Why is it so hard to tell people things directly? Why is it so hard to keep things confidential? How can we tell whether we’re sharing information because it is useful for caring, or because we want to seem important or get social credit? How can we help each other practice direct communication? How can we bring greater care to how we talk about each other, so that we can resist disorganizing patterns in our communities and groups?

All this in less than 20 minutes?

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon where you can find videos, conversations, and message boards where people are talking about the ideas. We pay for all the podcast expenses through listener support, so if you’re up for becoming a paid member of our Patreon, we really appreciate it. We also would love to see you there as a free member. 

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Tea kettle studies non-expert Morgan Bassichis is back with Dean to talk about resentment—how it can poison our enjoyment of the things we want and need to do, how it can be toxic for groups, how it is a reasonable response to the intense conditions we live under, and what it looks like to try to work through it so we can stay connected to the people, groups, and activities we care about. They talk through some of the tools Dean has been using in recent workshops about resentment and explore how we can work with this difficult mental and emotional tangle.

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon where you can find more videos and cute message boards where people are talking about the ideas. We pay for all the podcast expenses through listener support, so if you’re up for becoming a paid member of our Patreon, we really appreciate it. We also would love to see you there as a free member. 

Resources for episode:

Dean Spade: Resentment video for ASA Roundtable

Mutual Aid 101: Navigating Conflict When Building Power with Dean Spade

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Vicky Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting, joins Dean for a Trans Day of Visibility event organized by CLAGS (The Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY). Dean and Vicky talk about the gorgeous threat that trans people constitute to fascism, the power of holding multiple contradictory truths, and how to keep trying things and experimenting to create revolution.

Vicky's new book, The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World, is out now from Haymarket Books. Also check out more from Vicky at CAW (Collective of Anarchist Writers).

Video of this episode is available on YouTube. We will add the link to the full event including ASL interpretation on the CLAGS YouTube channel here when it becomes available.

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon where you can find more videos and cute message boards where people are talking about the ideas. We pay for all the podcast expenses through listener support, so if you’re up for becoming a paid member of our Patreon, we really appreciate it. We also would love to see you there as a free member. 

Send us a message

Dean chats with his friend, the brilliant writer and activist Eli Clare, about his newest book, Unfurl, which Eli describes as a queer disabled love song. Dean and Eli talk about grief and what it means to live with a broken heart, dealing with feelings of betrayal and disappointment in longtime movement work, and the persistence of internalized shame. They also talk about the importance of different types of connections across the long arc of Eli's exquisite work shaping trans politics and disability justice over the last many decades.

Learn more about Eli's work.

It's publication week for the new edition of Mutual Aid! Join us on Patreon for excerpts and videos about the new edition. You can also order it directly from us on Patreon to support the podcast.

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Dean sits down with friend and collaborator Benji Hart, a facilitator, educator, writer, and artist with years of experience in multiracial abolitionist organizing. Together, they discuss their anti-militarism work with the group Dissenters and explore the deep connections between transformative justice and artistic practice. Benji shares insights from their experience facilitating transformative justice processes, emphasizing the importance of treating the work as planting seeds, understanding that change takes time and finding meaning in the process itself.

Join us on Patreon for unique content, live events, and conversations to go deep on themes from the podcast. You can order the new edition of Mutual Aid or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going, and submit your questions for future episodes!

More from Benji:

Article: No Abolition Without Demilitarization: Black and Muslim Solidarity for Ending Police Worldwide

Book chapter: "An Experiment in Addressing Intraorganizational Violence" in Constellations of Care, edited by Cindy Barukh Milstein

Check out Benji's Patreon

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Morgan Bassichis is back with Dean to talk through a listener question about when self-improvement work is too rigorous and/or driven by shame. Morgan and Dean go deep, thinking together about the really painful beliefs about ourselves that sometimes come up and how to move through them. How can we hold ourselves with humility, recognizing our growth edges and taking actions we want to take, but also accept ourselves and each other as we are with gentleness?

Join us on Patreon for unique content, live events, and conversations to go deep on themes from the podcast. You can order the new edition of Mutual Aid or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going, and submit your questions for future episodes!

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Dean is joined by longtime collaborator and dear friend Andrea Ritchie, author of Practicing New Worlds, Invisible No More, No More Police, and other essential books and toolkits that you can find linked below and on the Interrupting Criminalization website. Andrea has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating, and agitating around policing and criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people for the past three decades. She talks with Dean about the gorgeous community defense work happening in Minneapolis, her work to organize with health care workers against criminalization, what kinds of relationships we need to build in these harrowing times, what has helped them to maintain a supportive friendship with each other over almost 20 years, and much more.

If you want to dig deeper, go to patreon.com/deanspade where we have posted much more free content, in addition to ways to support the podcast, and check out our message boards where you can meet other people thinking about these ideas together.

Check out Andrea’s amazing work:

Interrupting Criminalization

Beyond Do No Harm Network

Practicing New Worlds

No More Police

Invisible No More

Queer (In)Justice

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Chani Nicholas, queer feminist astrologer and author of You Were Born for This, joins Dean to talk about how she got politicized, how we hold fear and choose purposeful action in these difficult times, what it takes to stand up for what we believe in when were are under pressure, and what it means to worship time. 

Visit Chani’s website for access to her app and to listen to both of her podcasts: Astrology of the Week Ahead and Down to Astro. You can watch her 2026 Astrology Forecast for the Year Ahead video on YouTube here. And read her book You Were Born for This.

Join us on Patreon for additional content, live events, and conversations to go deep on themes from the podcast. You can order the new edition of Mutual Aid or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going.

Send us a message

Dean is excited to share an episode of the podcast Green Dreamer, hosted by kaméa chayne. Green Dreamer features thoughtful, engaging interviews with organizers, writers, artists, and thinkers working towards transformative change. You can listen to a recent episode featuring Dean here.

This episode features an interview with adrienne maree brown and addresses questions including: How do we navigate friendships in the context of social change and increasing political divides? What does it mean to ground ourselves in concepts that are much older than us — collectively nurturing our “garden of ideas”? And how do we move away from cancel culture to lovingly call one another in — to return and remember our shared values.

Listen to more episodes of Green Dreamer, support the show on Patreon, and visit them on Instagram.