Beyond Prisons

Latest Episodes:

Native Feminisms feat. Dr. Kimberly Robertson Apr 19, 2019

Show notes

Kim Wilson interviews Dr. Kimberly Robertson on her work on Native feminisms and practices, use of beadwork and zine making to generate knowledge, and the uncompensated emotional labor of Black and women of color in the academy and liberatory work.

Kimberly Robertson is a citizen of the Mvskoke nation, an artivist, scholar, teacher, and mother who works diligently to employ Native feminist theories, practices, and methodologies in her hustle to fulfill the dreams of her ancestors and to build a world in which her daughters can thrive.

She was born in Bakersfield, CA and currently lives on unceded Tongva lands. She is an Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Robertson is also a founding member of the Green Corn Collective and a member of the Indigenous Goddess Gang.

Her creative practices include screen printing, collage, beadwork, installation art, and zine-making and centers the ideas and practices of ceremony, storytelling, intersecting subjectivities, dislocation, decolonization, and Indigenous futurities.

Read her paper, "The 'law and order' of violence against Native women: A Native feminist analysis of the Tribal Law and Order Act": https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/download/22551/19734/

Website: kimberlydawnrobertson.com

IG: @kdrslaysthepatriarchy

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Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein

Music: Jared Ware

Message from Liberation Through Reading Apr 11, 2019

Show notes

The following is a quick message delivered on behalf of our friends at Liberation Through Reading.

They have an event coming up in Philadelphia, PA on Saturday, April 13th at the A-Space (4722 Baltimore Avenue) from 12PM-4PM, gifting Black children with free Black books. Details are below.

Contact Erica Caines at ericacaines@gmail.com

In almost 2 years, #LiberationThroughReading has gifted well over 1000 BRAND NEW representative books to Black children of all reading levels. Each book gifted features Black characters and written by Black authors. After hosting several events in Anne Arundel County, Md and one with the The Concord Freedom School in Brooklyn, NY, in the summer of 2018, #LiberationThroughReading has been invited to come to West Philly to offer the Black children in that community a chance to be introduced to a wide variety of books featuring people who look like them, in hopes to encourage a love a literacy. #LiberationThroughReading gives both children AND parents the opportunity to engage books. The initiative encourages parents to nurture a love of reading in their child and representation in their homes. We're bringing it to West Philly next month for the 8th event in order to have the same conversations with the community to push literacy by using representation as a tool that fosters both pride in heritage and love of reading!

Political Education feat. Rachel Herzing Apr 03, 2019

Show notes

Rachel Herzing joins Beyond Prisons for a conversation on political education, transformation, and more.

Rachel is the co-director of Center for Political Education, a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive social movements, the working class and people of color. She has been an organizer, activist, and advocate fighting the violence of policing and imprisonment for over 20 years.

She is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex. She was also the director of research and training at Creative Interventions a community resource developing interventions to interpersonal harm that do not rely on policing, imprisonment, or traditional social services.

Learn more about the Center for Political Education at http://politicaleducation.org/

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Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein

Music: Jared Ware

Knitting In Prison (feat. Taylar Nuevelle) Mar 22, 2019

Show notes

Taylar Nuevelle joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to talk about her experiences knitting while incarcerated. In particular, we talk about her love of knitting, the space it created for her in prison, as well as how it was used to punish her.

Ms. Nuevelle is a writer and advocate for justice-involved women. In 2017 she created a writing program at the Central Treatment Facility (CTF), the women's jail in DC, "Sharing Our Stories to Reclaim Our Lives". She is credited for creating the concept of the "Trauma-to-Prison Pipeline" for women and girls.

While incarcerated at the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA/CTF) D.C. and in the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 2010 to 2015, Ms. Nuevelle volunteered by providing legal advocacy for fellow incarcerated women. Ms. Nuevelle's writings have appeared in The Washington Post, Talk Poverty, The Nation, the Vera Institute for Justice Blog and Ms. Magazine online. Ms. Nuevelle holds a B.A. in Literature.

You can learn more about her work via Facebook at whospeaksforme. If you'd like to read more of her writings consider becoming a supporter on patreon.com/taylar where she will begin to publish monthly newsletters for patrons only. Visit Taylar's blog at https://taylarnuevelle.wordpress.com/

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Music by Jared Ware

PA DOC Targets Educators & Volunteers (feat. Connie Grier) Mar 04, 2019

Show notes

Connie Grier joins Beyond Prisons to discuss a new policy in Pennsylvania prisons targeting materials brought in by educators, religious practitioners, recreational and therapeutic facilitators, and others.

Connie is a mother of twin sons, a career educator, a mentor, and a social justice advocate. She is also the founder of The RESPECT Alliance, an organization which has, as one of its core tenets, the addressing of justice issues that impact marginalized populations both pre and post-incarceration. As an educator with 28 years of experience within the K-16 realm, Connie has an intimate relationship with the lack of advocacy and harsh discipline policies that lead to the school-to-prison pipeline and is determined to mitigate and ultimately, dismantle said pipeline, one student at a time.

Connie is an Inside-Out trained instructor and has taught courses inside of correctional facilities in Philadelphia and Chester. She is actively engaged in several social justice and criminal justice initiatives focused specifically on women, youth, and families, and has been a Graterford Think Tank Member for the past four years. She specializes in supporting marginalized youth and adults most impacted by the system academically and utilizes interactive workshops, speaking engagements, and mentorship to support in the areas of family reunification and advocacy.

View the new PA DOC memo [PDF].

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Music by Jared Ware

Transformative Justice & Pod Mapping Jan 18, 2019

Show notes

In the first episode of 2019, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein begin a conversation on transformative justice by discussing the concept of "Pods" and the process of "Pod-mapping."

These exercises involve developing skills and identifying relationships that are key to intervening in harm and providing the kind of support that accountability can demand.

Listeners can learn more and follow this conversation more closely via the following materials:

Pods and Pod-Mapping Worksheet by Mia Mingus & Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective
Creative Interventions Toolkit
Think; Re-Think by Connie Burk (The Revolution Starts At Home)

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Jail Free NYC feat. Nabil Hassein Nov 22, 2018

Show notes

Nabil Hassein joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to give an update on the campaign to close Rikers Island and the fight to oppose new jail construction in New York City.

Nabil is a technologist, organizer and educator based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He has worked professionally as a software developer and a teacher in both public schools and private settings. Nabil also works with grassroots police and prison abolitionist campaigns in NYC including Shut Down Rikers, Abolition Square and No New Jails NYC.

Nabil talks about Mayor Bill de Blasio's efforts to spend tens of billions of dollars on new jails at a time when money is desperately needed for housing, education, health care, food, and more. He talks about what the plan for new so-called "modern" jails will and won't do about gentrification and broken windows policing. And Nabil gives an idea of what it's like inside the various community meetings held by the city to promote the new jails and (allegedly) hear input from the public.

Follow the No New Jails NYC campaign on Twitter: @nonewjails_nyc

No New Jails NYC is holding its first public event on Sunday, December 2nd at the People's Forum in midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information.

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Prison Reporting Nov 08, 2018

Show notes

Kim and Brian share their thoughts and best practices for journalists looking to improve their reporting on incarceration and related issues. Even if you're not a journalist, we think this is a conversation you should be in on because it may help you read between the lines and evaluate media sources that cover these issues on your own.

Consider this a starting point for getting these thoughts and ideas out into the open, for developing a new paradigm for this particular kind of journalism, and for encouraging a more critical analysis of reporting on these issues.

We're in the process of developing a document that we are (for now) calling the Beyond Prisons Media Guide that we hope to share with you all soon. We welcome your feedback and questions for future installments on this topic.

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Kempis "Ghani" Songster (Part 2) Oct 11, 2018

Show notes

Kim Wilson speaks with formerly incarcerated activist Kempis "Ghani" Songster about the black liberation group MOVE in the second part of episode 29. (Listen to Part 1 here).

MOVE's Philadelphia home was bombed by a police helicopter in 1985. The attack killed eleven people—including five children—and resulted in the destruction of 65 houses in the neighborhood. There were only two survivors.

Ghani and Kim also talk about plans to rename a block of North 59th Street for Mayor Wilson Goode—Philadelphia's first black mayor, who designated the organization as a terrorist group and who pushed for the police attack.

Correction: We misstated the name of the street renamed for Mayor Wilson Goode. The renamed street was North 59th Street, not Osage Avenue. We regret the error.

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Kempis "Ghani" Songster Oct 04, 2018

Show notes

Kim Wilson interviews formerly incarcerated activist Kempis "Ghani" Songster in part one of Beyond Prisons episode 29.

In 1987, at the age of 15, Ghani was imprisoned for homicide. Despite his age, he was certified as an adult, convicted of first degree murder, and given a mandatory life sentence without parole, or what is increasingly known today as death by incarceration. Thus, he became one of America's many juvenile lifers/condemned children.

While in prison, he developed and facilitated programs to help people behind the walls with him, as well as programs to help people on the outside. He also co-founded outside organizations such as The Redemption Project and Ubuntu Philadelphia, and is a founding member of Right To Redemption, which helped launch Philadelphia's Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI).

After 30 years of incarceration, Ghani was released from prison at the age of 45. Since his release, he has joined the staff at the Amistad Law Project, a grassroots abolitionist law collective working for the release of others, as they fight to end the sentencing of human beings to life without parole/death by incarceration and to abolish prison industrial complex. He has also joined the membership of Ecosocialist Horizons. Ghani continues to organize actively for healing justice and a more livable planet.

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