Rustbelt Abolition Radio

In today’s episode, “Schools, prisons and Abolitionist futures”, we explore the parallels by which the institutions of prisons and schools work to reproduce our current society, and how they illuminate challenges in the rocky passageways toward abolition. We speak with imprisoned intellectual Harold “HH” Gonzales about the history of school segregation and the construction of the so-called school to prison pipeline. We also hear from Erica Meiners, who discusses how schools are embedded in carceral regimes, and encourages us to view them through the wider lens of abolitionist struggle. We conclude the episode with imprisoned artist Steven Hibbler, on how the policing and criminalization of Black and Brown youth prefigure the racist carceral logic of our society.

Abolitionists are committed to creating a world without police and prisons, but what alternative visions and practices of addressing intimate harm might point the way toward such a world? In this episode we explore efforts to re-imagine the politics of violence, harm, safety, and redress, spearheading practices of accountability and healing that move beyond the punitive logic of the carceral state.

Mia Mingus from the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective discusses alternatives to carceral feminism, and how the movement to end child sexual abuse points the way toward radically re-imagining practices of justice. We also speak with Claudia Garcia-Rojas, co-director of The Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women, and Maya Schenwar, Editor-in-Chief of Truthout and author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better.

In this episode we examine the relationships between carcerality, gendered and sexual violence on the one hand, and on the other: queer and trans liberation and the abolitionist horizon.

Josue Saldivar and Karolina Lopez from the Arizona-based organization Mariposas Sin Fronteras discuss the ways that migrants fleeing heteropatriarchal and transphobic oppression in their home countries are re-subjected to this abuse through the gendered and sexual operations of the U.S. carceral state and its militarized borders. We also speak with abolitionist scholar and activist, Treva Ellison, who examines the ways in which racial capitalism has continuously reproduced queer criminality, and how queer abolition may fundamentally shift our understanding of the geographies of carcerality.

In this episode we explore the relationship between the abolitionist horizon and the defense and reinvention of the commons. We speak with author and historian Peter Linebaugh about the ways the carceral state is founded upon enclosure and dispossession, and about hidden histories of collective resistance.

We also speak with Reverend Edward Pinkney, imprisoned activist and community leader, who discusses his experience of fighting racist enclosure and dispossession in Benton Harbor, and the possibilities for building collective power.

We wrap up the episode with an abolitionist poet who is currently imprisoned at the Women’s Huron Valley Prison in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Her poetry traces a genealogy that moves from the emergence of capitalism as the enclosure of the commons, and passes through the rise of the penitentiary to our present day.

In this special May Day segment of Rustbelt Abolition Radio, we speak with acclaimed scholar Robin D.G. Kelley to explore the critique of racial capitalism, the history of class struggle across the color line, and the abolitionist horizon.

We release this episode on May Day, or International Workers Day, celebrated annually by millions across the world in commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Square massacre and the ongoing global struggle for a world without capitalist exploitation and racial domination.

Robin D.G. Kelley is a professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. Kelley’s intellectual work spans the far reaching histories of the black freedom movement, African American history, culture, music, and aesthetics, and the politics of the black radical imagination. His books include Africa Speaks, America Answers!: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, among many others.

In this episode we focus on the ways women are organizing against gendered violence and mass criminalization -- and for a world free of domination. We speak with Mariame Kaba, long-time abolitionist organizer and writer, about her work with groups like Survived and Punished and Project NIA, and the criminalization of women under capitalist heteropatriarchy. We also talk to Adrienne Skye-Roberts from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), on specific challenges faced by women behind bars. We close today’s show with the voices of two women from from CCWP’s multimedia project, A Living Chance: Storytelling to End Life without Parole.

In this special bonus segment of Rustbelt Abolition Radio, we speak with long-time prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba about the Free Bresha Campaign.

In this special bonus segment of Rustbelt Abolition Radio, we return to renowned historian Heather Ann Thompson as she elaborates on the multifaceted origins of the historic 1971 Attica Uprising, drawing out their resonances with other prison rebellions across history and geography, as well as their telling implications for our present historical moment.

In this episode we examine the expansion of the carceral state as a response to anti-racist movements and urban rebellions of the 1960s, the political economic underpinnings of these social transformations, and the ways in which historic instances of prisoner rebellion are continuous with present-day resistance behind bars and point toward upheavals yet to come. We speak with historian Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, and Dr. Austin McCoy, an organizer and historian who explores the relationship between urban political economy and social movements. We also talk with Adine, whose son was recently transferred to Baraga Maximum Correctional Facility following an “inciting a riot” charge in the aftermath of the Kinross rebellion.

In this episode we focus on the joint struggle for migrant justice and prison abolition. We feature migrant justice and abolitionist organizers Aly Wayne and Abraham Paulos, and discuss the tensions between demanding citizenship and fighting for freedom.

We close the show with two firsthand narratives. One from Curtis, a local Detroiter whose family has been turned upside down by the carceral state and racial capitalism, and another from Harold Gonzales, currently incarcerated inside Michigan’s Kinross prison.