Stories for Power

Deana Lewis chats with Beth Richie and Alisa Bierria about the historical context and motivations behind their influential books that have been informed by and inform abolition feminism. Emphasizing practice as a lead to theory, both authors discuss the importance of their decades long on-the-ground work in the anti-violence movement, the struggle against anti-Black racism and the defense of criminalized survivors as a long arc towards freedom. They also reflect on their shared grounding in faith as necessary to remaining steady along the ever-changing pathway to liberation. 

List of references mentioned in this episode

Incite! Women & Trans People Against Violence

Critical Resistance

Arrested Justice

Abolition. Feminism. Now. 

Compelled to Crime

Abolition Feminisms Vol. 1 

Abolition Feminisms Vol. 2

Social Justice: Special Issue: Reimagining Community Accountability in Theory and Practice, 37(4) by Rojas Durazo, A., Bierria, A., & Kim, M. (2010). 

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

Deana Lewis talks with Valli Kalei Kanuha, Mimi Kim and Andrea Ritchie, whose entry into the feminist of color movement spans the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s. Together, they weave a long view of the abolitionist feminist movement that crosses generations, geographic expanses from Hawaii to Minnesota to Toronto and movements including HIV AIDS, anti-imperialist/Third World feminism, anti-police violence, and trans and queer justice spaces. They discuss the importance of Critical Resistance and INCITE! which provided  collective homes for radical abolitionist feminist of color organizing, joining seemingly isolated and disconnected political trajectories into a powerful force that has evolved into today’s abolitionist movement.

List of references mentioned in this episode:

Incite! Women & Trans People Against Violence

Critical Resistance

Gay Men’s Health Crisis 

Roger McFarland 

Larry Kramer

ACT UP

Community Accountability within the Progressive POC Movement 

Ejeris Dixon 

Safe Outside the System

Morgan Bassichis 

Community United Against Violence

Young Women’s Empowerment Project

Nadine Naber 

Paula Rojas

kai lumumba barrow

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

Deana Lewis talks with Mariame Kaba, Erica Meiners, and Shira Hassan - three abolitionist feminists who discuss the work they created and built in Chicago from the early 2000’s through the early 2010’s. They reflect on their path from witnessing the failures of the mainstream anti-violence movement especially for survivors, young people, formerly incarcerated people and sex workers – to experimenting and documenting their work in what became known as community accountability processes, transformative justice and abolitionist organizing. They talk about their relationships and how their solidarity and partnership fed their ability to experiment, find joy in the grief and ultimately create spaces and strategies for people to stay as safe as possible.

List of references mentioned in this episode:

Incite! Women & Trans People Against Violence, Critical Resistance, Roger’s Park Women’s Action Team (YWAT), Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP), Project NIA, Just Practice Collaborative, Claudine O’Leary, Laura Janine Mintz, New York Peer AIDS Education Coalition & Edith Springer, Kelly McGowan, We Charge Genocide, Chicago Freedom School, Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women, Love and Protect, Interrupting Criminalization, People Leftist Library Project, Between Friends, Illinois Deaths in Custody Project, Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, Education for Liberation Network, (more show notes at StoriesforPower.org) 

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

Our host, Deana Lewis, chats with Theryn Kigvamasudvashti, Kiyomi Fujikawa and Shannon Perez-Darby whose early community accountability work in Seattle rippled throughout the country. Their feminist abolitionist work inside and outside the evolving local domestic and sexual violence non-profit context in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s innovated so much of what we still use today. They discuss the critical work from Black-led, survivor-led, punk and queer and trans communities to create the many iconic projects such as Communities Against Rape and Assault (CARA) and API Chaya that were born during this critical era and that together dismantled the foundations of rape culture.

List of references mentioned in this episode:

Communities Agaisnt Rape and Abuse (CARA), Alisa Bierria, Eliaichi Kimaro, Incite! Women & Trans People Against Violence, Critical Resistance, African American Task Force Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment, Sista II Sista, Sister Song, Xandra Ibarra, For Crying Out Loud, Accountable Communities Consortium, Northwest Network, Seattle Rape Relief, API Chaya, Mia Zapata and The Gits, Home Alive, Girl We Got You, Collective Justice, Incite Diagram on Community Accountability (see more at StoriesforPower.org)

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

Join our host Deana Lewis as she interviews Esteban Kelly and Jenna Peters-Golden who were core collective members of Philly Stands Up that worked to restore trust and justice within the Philadelphia punk community starting in the early 2000’s. Philly Stands Up developed essential frameworks and practices for supporting accountability and change for people who cause harm while also supporting survivors in their rage and healing via Philly’s Pissed. They talk about how their close knit queer and trans community impacted the larger activist world and supported the long term work to end sexual violence throughout the city and beyond.

List of references mentioned in this episode:

Food Not Bombs 

Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP) 

Prometheus Radio

Philly’s PISSED

Cristy Road

Philly Stands UP

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

Deana Lewis chats with Cara Page and Mia Mingus about their work in Atlanta during the early to mid 2000’s. They discuss the building of the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative whose critical work intersected with the beginnings of the frameworks of healing justice and disability justice and the burgeoning reproductive justice movement. Mia and Cara talk about the impact of racism, Islamophobia, ableism, anti-immigrant, homophobic and reproductive oppression and the fallout from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Their collective work contributed to what became some of the pillars of transformative justice work throughout the city of Atlanta, the South and beyond.

List of references mentioned in this episode:

Incite! Women & Trans People Against Violence, Critical Resistance, Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective , Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative, Georgians for Choice became SPARK Reproductive Justice Now, Southerners on New Ground, Project South, Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, Sister Love (one of the first HIV AIDs organizations by and for Black Women), Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, Raksha/Breaking the Silence Project & Sonali Saddequee, Generation Five, Loretta Ross, National Black Women’s Health Project, Queer Progressive Agenda, Communities United, Men Stopping Violence, Aishah Shahidah Simmons , Shannon Perez-Darby 

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

Join Deana Lewis as she speaks with our guests Rachel Herzing, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Mimi Kim about the essential organizing they were a part of to end violence without police, prisons and other carceral systems during the early to mid-2000’s in Oakland and San Francisco. They discuss the impact of the events of September 11, ongoing gentrification, and ableism on forming abolitionist politics and synergy with the work of Critical Resistance and Incite!. Their reflections on the emergence of community accountability and transformative justice work in that era discern the nuance between what we call the work of interrupting violence without the police and the joy of being in relationship with each other as an essential part of abolitionist organizing.

List of organizations/historic/current references mentioned in this episode: 

Incite! Women & Trans People Against Violence, Critical Resistance, Critical Resistance & Incite Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex, Creative Interventions, Generation Five, Harm Reduction Coalition, Beckie Masaki and Asian Women’s Shelter, CAAAV, Sista II Sista, Revolution Starts at Home Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, CUAV  Communities United Against Violence , Mangos with Chili - co- directors Cherry Galette, Sins Invalid, Growing Safer Communities Track at Allied Media Conference here), Isaac Ontiveros (learn more at StoriesforPower.org)

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

Host Deana Lewis speaks with abolitionist feminists kai lumumba barrow, Paula X. Rojas, and Ejeris Dixon about organizing in New York City during the late 90’s and early to mid 2000’s. Their work to end police violence was spurred by police murders of Black and Brown people in New York City, sexual violence by police that targeted young people in Brooklyn, and anti-queer and transphobic violence throughout the city. Their projects ~ Sista II Sista, Critical Resistance NYC, Safe Outside the System, and the creation of Harm-Free Zones ~ built transformative justice and community accountability organizing at the local level to forge collective strategies that went on to shape the course of our abolitionist movement.

List of organizations/historic/current references mentioned in this episode:

Incite! Women & Trans People Against Violence

Critical Resistance

Audre Lorde Project and SOS Collective

Harm Free Zone

Vision Change Win

This amazing newsletter from 2004 has many projects from community based organizers in New York City including: Sista II Sista, FIERCE, Community Voices Heard, DRUM and more!

Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM)

El Puente Academy for Peace & Justice

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

In this episode, our host Deana Lewis, speaks with three Black feminist abolitionist organizers from Durham’s SpiritHouse. Nia Wilson, Mya Hunter and Alexis Pauline Gumbs discuss the Black and Brown survivor led group they formed called Ubuntu as a response to the Duke lacrosse rape case that led to the creation of one of the first Harm-Free Zones in the country. Their work as artists, educators and cultural organizers prompted a culture of care and community and fierce organizing that changed the way we understand and practice abolition today.

List of references mentioned in this episode:

Incite! Women & Trans People Against Violence

Critical Resistance

Ubuntu

Spirit House

Duke Lacrosse Case

National Day of Truth Telling

Read about Harm Free Zones from Critical Resistance and watch this short video on Harm Free Zone history from Spirit House

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org

In this episode, host Deana Lewis talks with micah hobbes frazier and Morgan Bassichis, two trans/nonbinary leaders of the transformative justice/prison abolition movement emerging out of radical organizing in queer/trans spaces in the early to mid-2000’s. micah, in his role at generationFIVE and in the harm reduction movement, and Morgan, formerly at Communities United Against Violence (CUAV), reflect on the centrality of queer/trans justice, racial and economic justice, and prison abolition as anchors to early transformative justice work. In stark contrast to the conservative LGBTQ movement’s embrace of marriage, military inclusion, hate crimes and “pinkwashing” that continue to shape neoliberal discourse, micah and Morgan trace abolitionist BIPOC-led queer/trans organizing back to the radical roots of the Black Panthers and Oakland–based racial and economic justice movement origins.

List of references mentioned in this episode:

Jewish Voice for Peace

Communities United Against Violence (CUAV)

Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project

Critical Resistance

Justice Now

Living Room Project

generationFIVE

White Night riots

Transforming Justice Conference

US Social Forum - Detroit (2010)

US Social Forum - Atlanta (2007)

Black Panthers (Archive)

Audre Lorde Project - Safe Outside the System (SOS)

StoryTelling Organizing & Project (STOP)

Pinkwashing

Mohammad el-Kurd

Dean Spade

Presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative 

Executive Producers — Mimi Kim, Rachel Caïdor & Shira Hassan

Producer, Sound Recordist, and Editor — iLL Weaver for Emergence Media

Host - Deana Lewis

Music Editor and Audio Engineer — Joe Namy

Digital Strategy- Yessica Gonzalez

Graphic Design - And Also Too

Theme song & music composed by — Scale Hands and L05 of Complex Movements in collaboration with Ahya Simone 

Stories for Power is supported by Collective Futures Fund and Libra Foundation

Learn more and share your stories at StoriesforPower.org