The Activist Files Podcast

In this episode of the Activist Files, Communications Director Sunyata Altenor and Senior Legal Worker Leah Todd sat with New York Times bestselling author and activist adrienne maree brown. Informed by 27 years of movement facilitation, somatics, science fiction and doula work, their new book Loving Corrections explores how we start to heal our divided country, world, and even our relationships based on making love-based adjustments and having honest conversations. adrienne tackles big ideas like race, patriarchy, and capitalism, and even the network of underground mycelium, and marries them with smaller intimate pieces from her heart. From how to create facilitated family check-ins to how nature can serve as a model for personal and collective transformation, this conversation pulls from the most creative and painful parts of the human experience to reimagine how humans connect across space and time. 

Speakers
adrienne maree brown - New York Times bestselling author and activist

Moderators:
Sunyata Altenor - Communications Director
Leah Todd - Senior Legal Worker

Black August began in the 1970s to mark the assassination of incarcerated political prisoners like the revolutionary organizer and writer George Jackson during a prison rebellion in California. Black August honors the freedom fighters, especially those inside the walls of our sprawling prison-industrial complex, who, with their vision, tenacity, and deep love for our communities, are leading us toward the horizon of abolition. The Center for Constitutional Rights is proud to be part of a rich legacy of inside-outside organizing to transform material conditions and build a world of collective safety without prisons, surveillance, and police.

This Black August we bring to you an episode discussing the ongoing inside-outside organizing taking place to put an end to involuntary servitude in prisons or, more appropriately named, prison slavery. We are proud to represent incarcerated workers in Alabama as they seek to abolish forced prison labor, and we will continue to support them until slavery is banned everywhere, once and for all, in all its forms – not just in the law but in practice. 

Alabama is one of several states to join the growing movement to abolish prison slavery and involuntary servitude at the state and federal levels. Voters in Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont have approved similar changes to their states' constitutions to remove the loophole permitting slavery as a form of punishment for incarcerated people.

Speakers:
Theeda Murphy - Abolish Slavery National Network, Organizer & Operations Manager
Max Parthas - Abolish Slavery National Network, National Campaign Coordinator & Paul Cuffee Abolitionist Center in Sumter, SC., Acting Director
Claude-Michael Comeau - Promise of Justice Initiative, Staff Attorney

Moderator:
maya finoh, Political Education and Research Manager

In episode 57 of The Activist Files, we’ll hear a discussion around Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that went before the Supreme Court on April 22, 2024. According to the National Homelessness Law Center, “this case will decide whether cities are allowed to punish people for things like sleeping outside with a pillow or blanket, even when there are no safe shelter options.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights, in our amicus brief, argued that the Supreme Court should rule that ordinances criminalizing homelessness violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. We’re joined by more than forty LGBTQIA+ rights groups who signed on in support of the brief. 

Amid a national homelessness crisis driven by a lack of affordable housing, the Court’s ruling in the case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson will have a profound effect on the rights and wellbeing of the hundreds of thousands of people without shelter in the United States. It will have a disproportionate impact on LGBTQIA+ people because they are unhoused at extremely high rates due to discrimination and bias. 

Legislators behind the laws have openly stated that their goal is to force unhoused people out of Grants Pass, a city of 40,000 that has no homeless shelters. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with the plaintiffs, issuing an injunction blocking enforcement of the ordinances.

We’re joined by Eric Tars Senior, Policy Director at National Homelessness Law Center, and Justin Lance Wilson, Co-founder of Rise Public Strategies. 

Speakers:

• Mikaila Hernández, Bertha Justice Fellows 
• Eric Tars, Senior Policy Director - National Homelessness Law Center

Eric Tars serves as the National Homelessness Law Center’s Senior Policy Director, leading the development, oversight, and implementation of the Law Center’s policy advocacy agenda to cultivate a society where every person can live with dignity and enjoy their basic human rights, including the right to affordable, quality, and safe housing. Eric helped spearhead the launch of the Law Center’s national Housing Not Handcuffs campaign, has served as counsel of record in multiple precedent-setting cases, including Martin v. Boise in the 9th Circuit.

Moderator:

• Zee Scout, Bertha Justice Fellows 

Resources:

• Johnson v. Grants Pass website
• Press Release - 46 LGBTQIA+ Rights Groups Urge Supreme Court to Overturn Oregon Ordinances That Criminalize Homelessness
• Case Page - City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (Amicus)

In episode 56 of The Activist Files, we’ll hear a discussion sparked by the 10th anniversary of the historic ruling in our stop-and-frisk case, Floyd, et. al v. City of New York.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, together with NYU Review of Law & Social Change, NYU’s Ending the Prison Industrial Complex, and NYU’s National Lawyers Guild Chapter, brought together law students, lawyers, organizers, and impacted community members for a one-day symposium on November 3, 2023. Together, they reflected on lessons learned in the last decade of struggle for police reform and accountability, and imagined a future of abolition and community safety.

What you will hear is the first panel of the day: “10 Years Since Floyd.” The panelists were activist and organizer Joo-Hyun Kang, who formerly headed the coalition Communities United for Police Reform; Floyd plaintiff David Ourlicht; and Floyd counsel Darius Charney, now the Director of the Racial Profiling and Biased Policing Investigations Unit at the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, also known as the CCRB. Our own Advocacy Director, Nadia Ben-Youssef moderated.

Speakers:
Darius Charney, Floyd counsel, current Director of the Racial Profiling and Biased Policing Investigations Unit at the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB)
Joo-Hyun Kang, activist and organizer
David Ourlicht, Floyd plaintiff

Moderator:
Nadia Ben-Youssef, Director of Advocacy

In the latest episode of the Activist Files, Bertha Justice Fellow Zee Scout speaks to five plaintiffs in our case Women in Struggle, et al. v. Bain, et al., recorded on the ground just before the National March in Florida to Protect Trans Youth and a Speakout for Trans Lives that took place in Orlando on October 7. 

Hundreds turned out to protest the state’s violent and unconstitutional laws and spoke out against the wave of anti-trans bills, which attendees linked to a longstanding history of capitalist and imperialist domination in this country.

Ahead of the march, participants in this historic grassroots movement worried about their ability to safely express their opposition to the anti-trans and anti-queer legislation passed by the Florida Legislature and signed by Governor Ron DeSantis due to Florida “Bathroom Ban”, which prevents transgender, gender nonconforming, and certain kinds of intersex people from accessing a restroom in line with their gender because it defines sex as one’s anatomy and naturally occurring hormones at birth.

Plaintiffs discuss the movement in support of LGBTQIA+ people, its historical and contemporary contexts, bringing to the discussion their personal motivations for joining the movement, and uplift ways that they continue to center trans joy in this  moment.

Speakers:
Melinda Butterfield, a 52-year-old transgender woman from New York City
Anaïs Kochan, is a 52-year-old transgender woman from Boston
Tsukuru Fors, a 52-year-old nonbinary person from West Hollywood, California
Lindsey Spero, a 26-year-old non-binary person from Pinellas County, Florida
Christynne Wood, a 67-year-old transgender woman from Lakeside, California

Moderator:
Zee Scout, Bertha Justice Fellow

On Episode 54 of the Activist Files, Bertha Justice Fellow Zee Scout speaks with Ashley Diamond, a civil rights activist, who made a pivotal choice on the eve of her trial in January against the Georgia Department of Corrections for Eighth Amendment violations of inadequate healthcare and sexual assault due to officials placing her in a male prison: She voluntarily dismissed her case to focus on healing. Since then, however, Ashley has struggled to access healthcare, therapy, and housing, because all of these necessities are inherently more challenging to obtain as a Black trans woman in the Southeast. Though her lawsuit is done, Ashley needs more support than ever - as many queer, trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming people do while state legislatures and reactionary judiciaries accelerate their attacks on trans civil rights. In typical Ashley fashion, though, she sings through the pain (including by debuting a new song during the podcast!).

Resources:
Diamond v. Ward case page, client bio, resource page, and press release
Ashley's op-ed in them
Articles in them, Xtra*, and Pink News
TGI Justice Project
Ashley's fundraiser

On the occasion of the first session of the newly established UN Permanent Forum on the People of African Descent (UNPFPAD), the Center for Constitutional Rights traveled to Geneva to build solidarity with comrades from around the world committed to helping advance the mandate of the forum. In this episode, our Executive Director, Vince Warren, has a conversation with Gay McDougall, member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and former Special Rapporteur of Minorities, and Amara Enyia, Chair of Civil Society Working Group for PFPAD. Gay and Amara discuss their experiences while serving in different UN groups and the significance these groups have to advancing racial equity around the world.

Resources:
International Civil Society Working Group for PFPAD (PDF)

Host/Guests:

• Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights
• Gay McDougall, Member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and former Special Rapporteur of Minorities
• Amara Enyia, the Chair of Civil Society Working Group for PFPAD

This year marks the 90th anniversary of our longtime ally and current partner, the Highlander Research and Education Center, the storied school that’s helped nurture the Black freedom struggle and other social movements across the south. For this month’s episode of the Activist Files, co-executive directors Ash-Lee Henderson and Allyn Maxfield-Steele chat with Emily Early and Jess Vossburgh from our Southern Regional Office about Highlander’s singular role as a training ground and meeting spot – the place where Rosa Parks took a workshop, Martin Luther King spoke, and John Lewis had his first integrated meal. Ash-Lee and Allyn discuss the centrality of the Black Freedom movement to other liberation movements, stress the importance of joy, storytelling, and cross-racial solidarity in movement-building, and celebrate the resilience and love that have enabled them to withstand repeated attacks from white supremacists. But Highlander’s 90th year, they say, is an occasion for looking ahead, for envisioning and planning to build a new world, one grounded in sharing and interdependence. The dire state of the country – “for some of us, fascism is already here” – makes this task all the more urgent, they say. 

Resources:

Red-baiting poster of Martin Luther King at Highlander
Highlander and Citizenship Schools
SNCC Legacy Project
Highlander petition opposing nomination to National Registry of Historic Places
Q & A with Norma Wong

How do attacks on trans organizing and rights impact related movements for bodily autonomy, reproductive justice, and liberation? On episode 51 of "The Activist Files," our Communications Associate Lexi Webster talks with Imara Jones, award-winning journalist, content creator and thought leader, founder of TransLash Media, and host of the TransLash podcast, and Diamond Stylz, activist, media maker, executive director of Black Trans Women Inc., and host of the Marsha’s Plate podcast, about how the work of movements for trans justice can inform social justice organizing on all liberation struggles.

Their discussion centers around the ways in which an emboldened post-Trump era extremist movement on the right has set into motion a plan whose long-term goal is the creation and enforcement of a white ethnostate and how such a plot relies on the eradication of minorities deemed deviant, the targeting of reproductive rights, and the elimination of any and all protections afforded to trans individuals and communities across the country. They discuss the need for a broad, intersectional approach by progressives who purport to fight for queer and trans liberation, and the continued urgency to build popular momentum for forward-thinking policies by and for Black trans people. They argue that to combat an organized and well-resourced white supremacist Christofascist, nationalist movement would require that the needs of Black trans communities are not only acknowledged, but prioritized by mainstream LGB institutions and that trans-interest groups engage in deeper dialogue and collaboration to provide guidance toward those ends. They also touch on the importance of mutual aid in this work and how our collective eagerness and ability to meet the material needs of Black trans people can act as a litmus test to assess the health of our society and movements.

Resources:

Organizations and public figures:

House of Tulip, New Orleans
The Transgender District, founded by three black trans women in 2017 as Compton’s Transgender Cultural District
Tourmaline, Black trans artist

Quotes and publications:

Biopower, theory of Michel Foucault
Necropolitics, theory of Achille Mbembe
Raquel Willis’ speech at the 2020 Brooklyn Liberation event
Toni Morrison quote
Julian K. Jarboe quote

On the 50th episode of “The Activist Files", legal worker Sadé Evans speaks with Helen D. Noel. Helen is an United States Air Force Chief Master Sergeant retiree, accomplished author, keynote speaker, and transformational consultant known for her nonjudgmental stance and radical coaching for others experiencing traumatic stress. This episode will discuss Helen’s 12-year journey to learn about the Rosenwald Fund study in efforts to understand the effects it may have had on her family and thousands of other African-American families. Helen is calling on the government to formally apologize for this medical study and take accountability. 

Resources:

Follow the Helen D. Noel’s work here

Read about the Rosenwald Schools Act of 2020