Abolition Must Be International: Study & Struggle #4 w/ Harsha Walia & more

A conversation about centering internationalism in the fight for abolition with Jalil Muntaqim, Harsha Walia, and more. Study and Struggle organizes against criminalization and incarceration in Mississippi through mutual aid, political education, and community building. We provide a bilingual Spanish and English curriculum with discussion questions and reading materials, as well as financial support, to over 100 participants in radical study groups inside and outside prisons in Mississippi. These groups correspond with groups from across the country through our pen pal program. We regularly come together for online conversations hosted by Haymarket Books. The curriculum, built by a combination of currently- and formerly-incarcerated people, scholars, and community organizers, centers around the interrelationship between prison abolition and immigrant justice, with a particular attention to freedom struggles in Mississippi and the U.S. South. For our Fall 2021 four month curriculum, we have borrowed and augmented Ruth Wilson Gilmore's argument that “abolition is about presence, not absence. It has to be green, and in order to be green, it has to be red (anti-capitalist), and in order to be red, it has to be international," having added “intersectional” as a fourth analytical category that we hope moves us beyond “single-issue” organizing. Study and Struggle provides a bilingual curriculum to all our imprisoned comrades in Mississippi with the support of our friends at 1977 Books and makes it fully available online for other study groups to use as they see fit. For more on Study and Struggle: https://www.studyandstruggle.com/ Our fourth webinar theme is "International" and will be a conversation about what it means for abolition to be internationalist, centering questions about the role of nations, states, and borders in maintaining hierarchy and subjugation, as well the necessity of organizing across and beyond them for collective liberation. --------------------------------- Speakers: Jaan Laaman was a long held political prisoner, who got out of captivity earlier in 2021. Jaan is one of the Ohio-7 — United Freedom Front anti-imperialist and anti- racist underground activists who were captured in 1984. Jaan is a life long working class revolutionary, always active in anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-repression work, both as a public activist and underground fighter Jalil Muntaqim is currently on parole after being wrongfully incarcerated for half a century at Attica Correctional Facility and Southport Correctional Facility. While incarcerated Jalil faced numerous attempts of retaliation by the state—including routine denial of parole. Before he was incarcerated, he was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He is the author of We Are Our Own Liberators: Selected Prison Writings, a collection of essays that he wrote while in prison. Felix Sitthivong is an organizer and advisor for the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group (APICAG). Through APICAG, Sitthivong has organized immigration, social justice and youth outreach forums and has designed Asian American studies courses, an intersectional feminism 101 class and anti-domestic violence program. He was previously a GED tutor through Edmonds Community College. He has published in The Marshall Project, Inquest, the Washington State Wire, and the International Examiner. He is currently serving a 65-year sentence at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center. Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism and Border and Rule. Trained in the law, she is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women's Memorial March Committee. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/A-Xi9UUNcoE Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks