This is a special episode!
Morgan and Shannon invite Andrea J. Ritchie and Kassandra Frederique to chat about prison abolition, policing, and some light reminiscing about our bond as Black female Cornell alum.
Andrea J. Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant police misconduct attorney and organizer whose writing, litigation, and advocacy has focused on policing and criminalization of women and LGBT people of color for the past two decades. She is currently Researcher in Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Criminalization at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. She is the author of the acclaimed "Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color," and most recently was interviewed by Ailsa Chang on NPR's All Things Considered in July 2020.
Twitter: @dreanyc123
Kassandra Frederique is the incoming executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), an NYC-based national nonprofit that works to end the war on drugs—which has disproportionately harmed Black, Latinx, Indigenous, immigrant, and LGBTQ communities—and build alternatives grounded in science, compassion, health, and human rights. She featured in the "Grass is Greener" documentary that premiered on Netflix in 2019.
Twitter: @Kassandra_Fred
ABOLITION LINKS:
Invisible No More Study Guide
http://invisiblenomorebook.com/study-guide/-
This study guide was created to accompany Andrea J. Ritchie’s book Invisible No More. This guide walks readers through the history of state violence against Indigenous, Black, and immigrant women of color and ways to imagine how a safer and more supportive environment can be created through abolition.
8toabolition.com
8 to Abolition was created by police and prison abolitionists in response to the #8CantWait police reform campaign that merely seek to reduce, instead of eliminate, continuing police violence against Black people. 8 to Abolition details the 8 steps that must be taken in order to create stronger and safer communities.
CriticalResistance.org
Critical Resistance is a national grassroots organization that is building a movement to abolish the prison industrial complex.
InterruptingCriminalization.com
Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action is an initiative at the BCRW Social Justice Institute led by researchers Andrea J. Ritchie, Mariame Kaba, and Woods Ervin. They created the #defundthepolice toolkit provides more detail on #defundpolice demand and why it is a necessary step on the path to abolition.
Our guest Kassandra Frederique outlines the ways in which gender has been central to the war on drugs throughout history in this clip from the Criminalizing Webs panel at Invisible No More conference in 2017.
http://sfonline.barnard.edu/unraveling-criminalizing-webs-building-police-free-futures/the-war-on-drugs/
Abolitionists to read or listen to:
Mariama Kaba (@prisonculture) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
Ruthie Wilson Gilmore
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/magazine/prison-abolition-ruth-wilson-gilmore.html
Angela Davis' "Are Prisons Obsolete?"
Recorded Saturday, June 26, 2020.
