Respair is kicking off the year by sharing a new project that we're proud to partner with and share with you! Welcome to Carceral Fictions & Abolitionist Realities, a series of narrative essays that reflect on emergent themes from conversations with Detroit-based organizers and futurists committed to abolition of police and prisons. Interweaving research with brief dispatches from speculative abolitionist futures, each episode draws together the voices of people working toward food justice, water access, educational equity, restorative justice, and Black liberation to connect thematic currents surrounding the abolition of police and prisons. In each episode, we look closely at the kinds of fictions that shape our current attachments to policing, prisons, and punishment to examine where they come from and how they affect us. At the same time, you’ll hear us explore abolitionist realities that counter these fictions and open up other ways of being.

The series is presented in partnership with Making Room for Abolition, a body of work that imagines a world without police and prisons by making speculative worlds through the lens of a home. It was dreamed up, written and produced by Lauren Williams; essays were co-produced by Ayinde Jean-Baptiste; and the audio was engineered by Conor Anderson. Featured guests include Nick Buckingham, Curtis Renee, Tawana Petty, PG Watkins, Angel McKissic, Monica Lewis-Patrick, Nate Mullen, Sirrita Darby, Kim Sherrobi, Monique Thompson, and Myrtle Thompson-Curtis. Voice actors who read various excerpts from references are credited on each episode. Our theme music is the instrumentals from a song called Detroit Summer by Invincible and Waajeed, courtesy of Emergence Media.

Full time-stamped transcripts are available at www.makingroom.online/essays. This show is presented in partnership with Respair Production & Media.