Freedom Dreams

Freedom Dreams, An Epilogue Sep 07, 2023

A final reflection from Amanda and Casey as they sign off, at least for now.

Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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A Mass Movement to End Solitary Confinement Aug 31, 2023

On July 8th, 2013 people being help in prisons across California stopped eating. They were protesting the state's use of ⁠solitary confinement⁠. 29,000 inmates participated in the strike. On this episode, you'll hear about the origins of this mass movement and how it impacted policy and perception around the use of solitary in the United States.

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Eduardo Dumbrique is studying to become a lawyer through an apprenticeship with the PJLC. Mr. Dumbrique began his legal studies during the 24 years he spent in prison, convicted of a crime he did not commit. As a jailhouse lawyer, Ed successfully litigated Title XV and civil rights cases against the state, including Dumbrique v. Brunner, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105791, in which he sought relief for prison guards' retaliation against him for his participation in a hunger strike protesting solitary confinement.

Now, free and fully exonerated, Ed works to ensure that children and their families are treated equitably and fairly within the juvenile justice system. He travels and speaks on his experience as someone wrongfully convicted and sent to adult prison at age 15. He has spoken to high school students and youth in juvenile halls and camps, sharing his story and encouraging them to cherish their lives and futures.

Sarah Shourd is an award-winning, trauma-informed investigative journalist, Pulitzer-presented playwright, anti-prison theater activist, author, producer, somatic practicioner and 2019 Stanford John S. Knight Fellow based in Oakland and San Rafael, CA.

Dolores Canales is Co-Founder of California Families Against Solitary Confinement

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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An Intergenerational Vision for Beloved Community Aug 02, 2023

"It's the education that goes with wanting to be safe. And if you talk to young people, they get it. They understand the police don't make us safe. The cameras don't make us safe. We make us safe." Myrtle Thompson Curtis, Feedom Freedom Growers

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Myrtle Thompson Curtis is the founder of Feedom Freedom Growers. She is a mother, grandmother, visionary organizer and thinker on the east side of Detroit. Myrtle is a life-long Detroiter , urban farmer and member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center.

Curtis Renee is an aspiring healer and chef, a reiki practitioner, and a lifelong Nonviolence (positive peace) activist from Detroit, Michigan. Curtis' Social Justice passions encompass Black liberation, Black & Palestinian solidarity, feminism, and queer activism.

Mama Myrtle and Curtis join Freedom Dreams to describe their vision for safety and beloved community in Detroit and why programs like Project Greenlight and ShotSpotter are not part of that vision.

Curtis was featured in season 1 of Freedom Dreams in the episode, How Can We Heal and Reimagine Safe Communities?
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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Dreaming of Child-Safe Zones Jul 19, 2023

"The big idea was 1) Be hyperlocal. 2) Determine what resources are needed. 3) Shift the mindset of what the role of policing in the neighborhoods are and how they perform those duties." - Marlon Peterson

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Since his decade of incarceration, Marlon Petersonhas written, created programming, lectured, organized, and advocated alongside the formerly incarcerated, victims of gun violence, womxn, immigrants, and young people. Marlon is the author of Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist’s Freedom Song, host of the DEcarcerated Podcast, and owner of his own social impact endeavor, The Precedential Group Social Enterprises and its nonprofit arm, Be Precedential, Inc. His TED talk, “Am I not human? A call for criminal justice reform”, has amassed over 1.2 million views.

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Building Power Inside the Informal Economy May 03, 2023

"The absence of any statistics, like data, history, etcetera around informality is what drove me into getting into it because it was like, these are questions that kept me up at night that I wanted to solve." - Richard Wallace, Founder and Executive Director of EAT - Equity and Transformation

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Richard Wallace is the Founder and Executive Director of EAT and Nicole Laport is the Director of Communications at EAT, an organzation that's been doing something really powerful in Chicago the past several years. They’re organizing people in the informal economy—that includes economic activities that aren’t regulated or protected by the state. As EAT puts it, “These are the bucket boys who we pass on the way to the train every day, the DVD bootlegger at your local barber shop, the person selling loose cigarettes at two for a dollar in front of the local liquor store, and the trans and cisgender commercial sex workers in our communities.” This is a huge part of the economy! And it’s often one that people with criminal records are forced into because they’re shut out of the formal workforce. Very often, work in the informal economy is criminalized, which means it can lead to re-incarceration and extreme poverty. So, EAT saw a need to build power among informal workers and fight to change the structure of the economy itself, and fight the anti-Black racism at its core.
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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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The Community is the Family and the Family is the Community Apr 19, 2023

"We consider ourselves an incubator for transformative justice here in the south. We are committed to really creating a new way of being, of dealing with violence." - Rukia Lumumba, Executive Director, People's Advocacy Institute.

Rukia Lumumba comes from a lineage of Black Freedom Fighters. Her dad was Chokwe Lumumba, former member of the Republic of New Africa and eventual mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. She is the Executive Director of the People's Advocacy Institute, co-coordinator of the Electoral Justice Project, and campaign co-coordinator of the successful Committee to Elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba for Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. She joins Freedom Dreams to describe how she's help build an incubator for transformative justice in the south.

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠.

⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠⁠

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The Cost of Truth and Reconciliation Apr 05, 2023

"We think that there is a basis for human beings to change, and if I didn't think that I wouldn't be involved in this. I often say I, I don't give this speech to alligators...they're not going to change, and I'd be wasting my time. I do think that humans can change and we have to shift the conditions that make it possible for people who may be leaning toward change to want to actually walk toward each other in a way that hold redemptive possibilities for the nation. - Reverend Nelson Johnson, Co-Founder of the Beloved Community Center.

On November, 3rd, 1979, Reverend Nelson Johnson, Joyce Johnson and fellow members of their Communist Workers Party helped organize an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally and march. Five people were killed that day and others injured. Over 20 years after the Greensboro Massacre, the city convened a truth and reconciliation process designed to unpack and better understand the events of 1979. On this episode of Freedom Dreams, we ask...did it work?

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DIG DEEPER:

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Beloved Community Center

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠.

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Finding a Common Justice Mar 22, 2023

"There is not one model or one program that is going to make us safe. There is not one alternative that is going to replace prison. That is not the formula. It's like, what is the whole range of the kind of thing we should do that cumulatively is gonna keep us safe?" - Danielle Sered

Danielle Sered is the founder of Common Justice, an organization that develops and advances solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed.
CJ operates the first alternative-to-incarceration and victim-service program in the United States that focuses on violent felonies in the adult courts.

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠To support our work click here⁠.

⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠

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⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠

⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠

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Detroit Life is Valuable Everyday Mar 08, 2023

"We can do incredible things from a technological medical care standpoint. Right? Like there's been incredible advances in healthcare and with some of the things that we have in terms of like stopping bleeds and doing all these things right to prolong life. But, you know, I knew that there was a gap in terms of preventing re-injury." - Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Founder of DLIVE: Detroit Live is Valuable Everyday

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A doctor in Detroit notices the same patients keep passing through his ER, often with gunshot wounds. He realizes this "golden hour" of opportunity is the precise time to engage patients with a transformative intervention to stop an unnecessary cycle of violence.

GUESTS: Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Founder of DLIVE, Detroit Live is Valuable Everyday & Chuck, a DLIVE member

Learn more about DLIVE @ detroitlive.org

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. To support our work click here.

Freedom Dreams Website

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Freedom Dreams Twitter

Detroit Justice Center

Detroit Justice Center IG

We Make Peace Feb 22, 2023

"What if you can still feel a sense of justice without reaching out to the legal system? What if you still can have access to healing without punishment? What if this person who harmed you can do the hard work to never harm anyone ever again? Would that feel like justice for you? And if so, how can we support you in achieving that goal?" - Mike Milton, founder of the Freedom Community Center

On this opening episode of Freedom Dreams: Season 2, Mike Milton, founder of the Freedom Community Center in St. Louis, Missouri is building a movement of survivors in order to design systems that actually keep us safe, rooted in Black freedom, self-determination and healing.

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. To support our work click here.

Freedom Dreams Website

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Freedom Dreams Twitter

Detroit Justice Center

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Season 2 of Freedom Dreams! Feb 17, 2023

This season on Freedom Dreams we're amplifying community-led solutions to violence and harm. We called on some of the boldest people we know to learn lessons from what they're building. And of course, we asked them what their freedom dreams are. Our new season begins on February 22nd.

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Learn more about the work of the Detroit Justice Center

Fear of Black Consciousness Jun 09, 2022

The Freedom Dreams team is hard at work on a new season of the show. It’ll come to you this fall. But in the meantime, we want to share a conversation Amanda recently had with the incredibly brilliant and tender-hearted philosopher, Lewis Gordon. Their talk was hosted by Source Booksellers in Detroit’s Cass Corridor this past winter.

Gordon's new book is Fear of Black Consciousnessand in it he peaks precisely to the moment that we're in. He helps us to understand the COVID 19 pandemic, police violence, and this latest wave of social movements and repression, in the context of the past five years and the past five centuries–and longer. His book weaves in history, linguistics, film interpretation (with an incredible reading of Jordan Peele’s Get Out), music, memory, mythology, and more.

His sources and frameworks are so wide-ranging because his task is so ambitious: to understand the contours of society and how we make meaning, to tell the history of anti-black racism, and, always, to orient us toward liberation. In that orientation, his book belongs to the radical visionary organizing tradition, which James Boggs furthered so powerfully in his lifetime.

Gordon offers us tools to ask better questions of ourselves, like ‘how might we become agents of change?’ ‘How can we expand our options,’ and, as he puts it, ‘build productive and life-affirming institutions of empowerment?” If Lewis Gordon isn’t a Freedom Dreamer, we don’t know who is!

How Do We Grow Our Own Food on Our Own Land? Feb 09, 2022

“For anti-colonial movements in the past and still today, regaining access to land that you and your people were displaced from is a core part of what it means to be free.”

In this final episode of the first season of Freedom Dreams, our guests take on black liberation through land ownership and food sovereignty. Tepfirah Rushdan and Erin Bevel talk about co-founding the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund to help local growers navigate purchasing land. Natalie Baszile, author of We Are Each Other’s Harvest, discusses the history of Black farmland loss and the recent Black Farmers Act. And, Lynelle Herndon shows us how Home Ec Detroit builds community gardens on abandoned Detroit lots.

You can contribute the The Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund here and check out Natalie Baszile’s book here.

Find us on IG and Twitter.

TRANSCRIPT

How Do We Create Health Care that Meets our Needs? Dec 29, 2021

In our penultimate episode of the season, we’re talking about radical solutions in health care. We look at the historical example of the 1970 Lincoln Hospital Takeover in the Bronx with former Black Panther and Young Lord Cleo Silvers. Casey also goes down the history rabbit hole discussing their MA thesis. We also sit down with Fiyah Angel and Rachel Thompson from the Radical Well-Being Center in Southfield, MI to talk about their work in the field of mental health and decolonized healing practices.

Want to learn more about the Lincoln Hospital takeover? We recommend two excellent recent documentaries: Emma Francis-Snyder’s Takeover and Mia Donovan’s Dope Is Death.

To learn more about the Detroit Justice Center and support our work, go here.

How Can We Heal and Reimagine Safe Communities? Dec 15, 2021

In this episode, we explore the building blocks of community safety—namely knowing your community and working together to keep each other safe. We talk to Sirrita Darby, and Bri and Kris, two youth organizers with Detroit Heals Detroit about the work they do to host healing circles for youth in Detroit, and the importance of collective healing. We also sat down with Curtis Renee, a powerful organizer with Detroit Safety Team (and an excellent chef) to talk about the work they’re doing to encourage Detroiters to find alternatives to safety that don’t involve calling police.

Want to find out more about community safety initiatives where you live?

We recommend checking out:

One Million Experiments

Transform Harm

Firework Foundation

Don’t Call The Police

How Do We Make School Ourselves? Dec 01, 2021

In this episode, we explore place-based education (PBE)—the pedagogy behind it, and how it works in practice. We talk to Ethan Lowenstein, Director of the SE Michigan Stewardship Coalition about the impact being rooted in place can have on a child's education. We also speak to Julia Putnam, Amanda Rosman, and Marisol Teachworth of The James and Grace Lee Boggs School, a K-8 school on Detroit's east side that "immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities, and experiences, using these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum." And in the plot twist of the season, we learn that Casey taught art at the Boggs School for a year.

Want to learn more about James & Grace Lee Boggs? This article from Yes! Magazine featuring Julia Putnam & The Boggs Center are excellent starting points.

How Do We Ensure our City Budgets Reflect Our Priorities? Nov 17, 2021

In this episode, we dig into participatory budgeting with Shari Davis, Co-Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project to better understand how an expansion of the democratic process can benefit communities. We also speak with Angelica Chazaro, an organizer with Decriminalize Seattle to discuss Seattle's movement to defund police, as well as PG Watkins, Director of Detroit's Black Bottom Archives, and community organizer about the durational fight for a people's budget in Detroit.

Want to learn more about how to organize around defunding police and investing in communities?

Interrupting Criminalization's The Demand Is Still Defund report: an excellent resource on how to run #defund budget fights.

How Can Cooperative Economics Help Us Build Collective Power? Nov 03, 2021

In this episode we speak to DJC staff attorney Whitley Granberry and Jerry Hebron who runs Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in Detroit’s North End. Our guests deliver a powerful summary of what cooperative economics are, and how they serve to shore up equity for future generations. We’ll also talk to Jerry about ancestral recipes and how her farm's delicious Afro-Jam came about.

TRANSCRIPT

To learn more about and support our work, visit detroitjustice.org/donate.

RELEVANT LINKS

Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Non-profit urban farm in Detroit still helping amid COVID-19 outbreak

How Can You Shut Down Your City Jail? Oct 20, 2021

In this episode, we speak to Marilyn Winn and Xochitl Bervera, two lead organizers in the fight to close the Atlanta City Jail. Our guests lead us through the fight to get laws stricken from the books, ensuring that the jails population would dwindle or “starving the beast” as they call it. Learn more about their campaign and about the Center for Wellness and Freedom, the community wellness hub they intend to replace the jail.

TRANSCRIPT

To learn more about and support our work at the Detroit Justice Center, visit detroitjustice.org/donate.

RELEVANT LINKS

The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale

'Starving The Beast': The Women Working To Close a Misused Atlanta Jail

Why Freedom Dreams? Oct 05, 2021

Welcome to Freedom Dreams! The show that exploresthe many paths to building a truly just future for everyone. Centered in abolitionist thinking, this podcast, produced by the Detroit Justice Center, expands beyond the realm of criminal justice into conversations around what we could be building and prioritizing instead of punishment and further harm to make our communities genuinely safe. Hosted by Amanda Alexander, Founding Executive Director of DJC & Casey Rocheteau, Communications Manager of DJC, each episode seeks to answer a question that faces our present moment.

TRANSCRIPT

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