Beyond Prisons

In this special Beyond Prisons dispatch, Haverford College student and activist Ellis Maxwell shares a conversation they had with their friend Charles Boyd, who is incarcerated at SCI-Phoenix in Pennsylvania. Maxwell is the co-head of Rethink Incarceration, a group that advocates for the immediate abolition of all prisons. They work toward abolition in Pennsylvania in solidarity with incarcerated people and other organizations. Maxwell and Boyd met through Rethink Incarceration. Boyd is incarcerated on a death-by-incarceration sentence and has been in prison for over thirty years. During that time, Boyd has worked on projects including the Alternatives to Violence Project, Right to Redemption, and Let’s Circle Up. Let’s Circle Up was founded by men incarcerated at Graterford - which is now Phoenix - in 2007, and “seeks to build relationships, community, and leaders through experiential, participatory, and collaborative restorative justice education.”  Maxwell and Boyd's conversation was recorded on March 31, 2020. Since then, the prison has been locked down following the first positive test inside. The administration did not inform prisoners until day fifteen of the quarantine. In early April, a prisoner died from symptoms of COVID-19, which was not announced on the news until Monday, April 13. The administration didn’t - and still to this point has not - announced this death to other prisoners. They only found out through outside news broadcasts. As of this recording, one unit at SCI-Phoenix is completely quarantined with no present access to phones. The majority of confirmed cases have come from this one unit, so the entire prison is locked down with less than an hour of time for prisoners to be outside of their cells. In the conversation, Boyd emphasizes the inconsistency and total lack of transparency from the Department of Corrections. He says that “in this crisis who you are, what you do, and how well you deny involvement or outright lie, determines who gets a pass and who doesn’t.” “What alarms me is that I feel more cut off from society today than I have since I’ve been incarcerated,” Boyd said. If you want to get in touch with Maxwell, you can email them at ellis.maxwell@gmail.com. For more information on Let’s Circle Up, visit letscircleup.org. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Writer, artist, and NYU student Jose Díaz shares his experience of being arrested and imprisoned on a technical violation during the COVID-19 crisis.  Jose describes the conditions and lack of medical care inside New York City jails where he was held. He talks about the organizing efforts that secured his release and how exceptionalism played a role in gaining people’s support.  Finally, Jose shares his thoughts on why demanding the immediate release of prisoners is important and why reform efforts so often fall short of addressing people’s problems. Jose Díaz is a Master’s student majoring in Social and Cultural Analysis with an emphasis on Latino Studies at NYU. As a student and advocate, he seeks to unravel ideological narratives that underlie our common notions of race, class, and gender, and how those ideas inform public space and human interaction. He is also a writer and public speaker, where he uses the power of storytelling to highlight his personal struggles with incarceration while challenging theoretical postulations about the carceral system. He advocates and educates on the importance of inclusivity within prison initiative programs and education as well as pushing back against the language, privilege, and ideas that perpetuate the reproduction of negative notions of people of color. As an artist and photographer, he is currently engaged in a project that looks at the urban landscape of New York City as a place to explore cultural memory, the city block, and overlapping diasporas. Jose’s website: https://www.jdiazmemory.com/bio NYU Prison Education Program: https://prisoneducation.nyu.edu Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Beyond Prisons hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein walk through our guide on how to support incarcerated people and their loved ones during the Coronavirus Crisis. You can check it out along with some demands we put together, mutual aid resources, and more on our new website at beyond-prisons.com/covid19. Many, many thanks to everyone who worked with us to pull this together and who have contacted us to volunteer. We’re sincerely grateful. Please share this guide with your friends, your family, on social media, wherever you can, if you find it helpful. We want to get it into the hands of as many people as it can help, and we will continue to update it in the coming days and weeks so please check back.  Additionally, if you have any regional or facility-specific suggestions for people supporting their loved ones on the inside, please submit them using our form. We’re trying to pool information that is helpful to everyone while having specific locally relevant suggestions as well. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Beyond Prisons podcast host Kim Wilson sits down with Amani Sawari of the Right2Vote campaign to talk about her work on a nationwide effort that grew out of the 2018 prison strike demand to extend voting rights for all justice-involved people. Amani and Kim talk about what it was like for her to teach poetry inside a youth prison and she shares a couple of poems written by her former students. Amani Sawari is a writer, founder of the site sawarimi.org, coordinator for the Right2Vote Campaign and a 2019 Civil Rights Fellow with the Roddenberry Foundation. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2016 with a Bachelor’s degree in Media Communication Studies and Law, and Economics & Public Policy. Her visionary publications aid in distributing messages and building community among participants in the prison resistance movement on both sides of the wall. In the aftermath of the Lee County Massacre that occurred in South Carolina’s Department of Corrections, Sawari was selected by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak to be their spokesperson for their 2018 National Prison Strike. Her coordination of over 400 endorsing businesses, groups and organizations led to the successful participation of incarcerated activists in 17 states and 3 regions abroad including, Palestinians held captive in Israeli Prisons, Leipzig Prison in Greece and at Burnside Prison in Nova Scotia, Canada.  In addition to coordinating Right2Vote, Amani is organizing the Statewide campaign to end Truth-in-Sentencing laws and bring back Good Time in Michigan. Today Sawari’s monthly Right2Vote Report is mailed to hundreds of prisoners in 27 states across the country.  Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware Amani read the following poems by her former students on the episode:   CHANGING WAYS No New Year’s resolution for me No crying decree No promises, just average changes Less time screwing around More time helping my parents in need Less time skipping school More time going to school Not so many fake friends A few more real friends Not so many regrets A few more successes Less running away from reality More facing reality Less dreaming More accomplishments Change after all…is good Change after all Is all I know   Dedicated to my mom   DAILY THINGS I go to bed every night I see a couple bright lights I hear a couple sounds And they sound like gun shots I smell hot Cheetos Eating them in my bed Sleeping in a king size bed Like rolling hills underneath me Touching my heart with fear Thinking that somebody’s gonna come for me Kick down my door Come in my house And hit me But I hit him back And had no fear.   LIFE OF A YOUNG MEXICAN Just a young child Living life wild Rarely had a father figure So I just started busting triggers I was a good boy Back in elementary Who woulda thought I’d get to see the penitentiary Squares at my school never really liked me I felt misplaced I just wanted to be happy I told my mother Let’s go back to Mexico She said “sorry mi’jo” You just got to let it go I said “Fuck it” And went to Denny middle school Everything was different I started acting like a fool Met some crazy vatos back in 7th grade That was when my life really freaking changed I started kicking it with all the fucking “criminales” We would be posted like a herd of “animales” I started sportin’ that blue I started reppin’ the “sur” I use to think it was about hanging and smoking dope Then I realized that this gang life ain’t no joke Got beat up a couple times Sniffed a couple lines Sold a couple dimes

Beyond Prisons Co-host Kim Wilson interviews Michelle Jones about her work as an artist, activist, and historian. Michelle shares the projects that she’s currently working on and she reflects on what it’s like to be a third-year graduate student working on her dissertation proposal. She speaks to Kim about reentry for women in Indiana, having a soft place to land after incarceration, and her fight for sentence modification so that she could attend grad school after having spent 20 years in prison. Michelle speaks candidly about what it means to her to have a spiritual practice, her art installation “Point of Triangulation” and the need for arts-based research. They round out the hour by addressing the problematic notion of exceptionalism with regards to prisoners and former prisoners, Michelle’s response to being "thingified" by the media, as well as what it was like to have academics attempt to co-opt the work that she and other women historians did inside. Michelle Jones is a third-year doctoral student in the American Studies program at New York University. She is interested in excavating the collateral consequences of criminal convictions for people and families directly impacted by mass incarceration, in addition to participating in a scholarly project challenging the narratives of the history of women’s prison with a group of incarcerated scholars. While incarcerated, Michelle published and presented her research findings to dispel notions about the reach and intellectual capacity of justice-involved women.   Michelle’s advocacy extends beyond the classroom through collaborations and opportunities to speak truth to power. While incarcerated, she presented legislative testimony on a reentry alternative she created for long-term incarcerated people that was approved by the Indiana State Interim Committee on the Criminal Code and SHE has joined the advisory boards of the Lumina Foundation and the Urban Institute.    She is a founding member and chair of the board of Constructing Our Future, a reentry alternative for women created by incarcerated women in Indiana. She is A 2017-18 Beyond the Bars fellow, a 2017-18 Research Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, and a 2018-19 Ford Foundation Bearing Witness Fellow with Art for Justice, a 2019 SOZE Right of Return Fellow, a 2019 Code for America Fellow, and A 2019-2020 Mural Arts Fellow. Michelle is currently under contract with The New Press to publish the history of Indiana’s carceral institutions for women with fellow incarcerated and formerly incarcerated scholars. As an artist, Michelle is interested in finding ways to funnel her research pursuits into theater, dance, and photography. Her original co-authored play, “The Duchess of Stringtown,” was produced in December 2017 in Indianapolis and New York City and her artist installation about stigma, “Point of Triangulation,” ran September 26, - October 1, 2019 in New York. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

On this episode of the Beyond Prisons Podcast, hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson catch up with  Certain Days Collective members Daniel McGowan, Josh Davidson, and Sara Falconer. The group publishes the Certain Days: Freedom For Political Prisoners calendar, now in its 19th year of publication and filled with radical historical dates, 12 thought-provoking articles and beautiful artwork for each month throughout the year. All proceeds support prisoners and grassroots organizations, and we urge you to visit certaindays.org to obtain copies of their beautiful 2020 edition, the theme of which is “Knitting Together The Struggles.” The five of us discuss the artwork and articles that make up the calendar, as well as the difficult-but-extensive and necessary collaboration with incarcerated people throughout the year to produce it. We also touch on subjects such as the importance of charting radical history, prisoners’ relationship to time, and the value of having such a beautiful and thought-provoking calendar available to people on the inside. Daniel McGowan is a former political prisoner and former member of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). He has been involved with political prisoner support for most of his activist life and is currently a member of the Certain Days collective. Josh Davidson has been an activist for two decades now, focusing on prisoner support and the abolition of the carceral state. He is actively working to start a Books Through Bars program in Baltimore, MD, where he also works on community organizing and against police brutality. Sara Falconer has been working to raise the voices of prisoners for over 18 years, collaborating on projects such as 4strugglemag.org, a zine by and for prisoners, and the Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar. She is a member of the Barton Prisoner Solidarity Project in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Buy the Certain Days calendar and learn more about the collective at certaindays.org Certain Days on Facebook @certaindays on Twitter @certaindayscalendar on Instagram Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Abolitionist and journalist Jared Ware joins the Beyond Prisons podcast for a conversation on deteriorating abusive conditions within South Carolina prisons. Jared gives us an update on recent organizing efforts by prisoners in South Carolina and their comrades on the outside, who delivered a demand letter to UN offices in the United States, Carribean, and United Kingdom last month. They argue the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) is violating international standards for confinement known as The Mandela Standards.  We discuss the last several years of prisoner-led organizing to call attention to horrendous abuses. This includes intense restrictions on prisoners in general population within higher-security prisons, such as metal plates placed on windows, meal slots on the doors, heavy limitations on movement, and little-to-no programming or recreation.  We also touch on the disgusting, absurd games and propaganda wars SCDC engages in, including collaborations with nonprofits that serve to whitewash the department of corrections conduct and the conditions in which they force people to live. Resources & Additional Reading South Carolina Prisoners Call For UN Intervention As Abusive Conditions Worsen by Jared Ware South Carolina Prisoner Demand Letter To The United Nations South Carolina Prisoners Appeal to the UN for Relief From Torturous Conditions by Kelly Hayes 'No Other Path to Redress': South Carolina Prisoners Appeal to UN After State and Federal Officials Ignore Pleas for Livable Conditions by Eoin Higgins Interview: South Carolina Prisoners Challenge Narrative Around Violence At Lee Correctional Institution by Jared Ware Check out Jared Ware's podcast with Josh Briond, Millennials Are Killing Capitalism Follow Jay and MAKC on Twitter Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

In a followup to the last episode, "Stop Hugging Cops," Beyond Prisons hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson share some resources and discuss alternatives to calling the police. We talk about the chain reaction that is created by bringing the police to a community or into an individual’s life, and we suggest ways to scrutinize the impulse to call the police. Brian also calls on White people to consider what it means for them to call the police on Black and Brown people and offers some thoughts for how white people can do better in situations that generally don’t require intervention. Kim also shares some of what she has learned from transformative justice work and what communities can do to address harm without state intervention. This episode is chock full of insights, ideas, suggestions, and lessons, and it is by no means a comprehensive account of alternatives to calling the police, but it does provide a place to begin. Resources & Additional Reading "Chain Reaction: Alternatives To Calling Police" by Project NIA "Abolition Of Policing Workshop" by Critical Resistance "Alternatives To Police" by Rose City Cop Watch "12 Things To Do Instead Of Calling The Cops" by the May Day Collective and Washtenaw Solidarity & Defense "What To Do Instead Of Calling The Police" by Aaron Rose Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

In this episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein discuss a video published by Critical Resistance that features Professor Dylan Rodriguez talking about policing and police practice. We encourage you to spend a few minutes watching the video before listening to this episode. We chose this video because Professor Rodriguez helps us to interrogate the way that we think about the police. He makes the case for why "policing" is a more accurate term than "police brutality" and urges us to think about why some people need to demonstrate their humanity by hugging cops. Brian and Kim use the points by Professor Rodriguez to further discuss what it means when abolitionists and other activists are willing to make exceptions for some people to go to prison, and what kinds of conversations we need to have to shift peoples' consciousness about punishment. We push back against the idea that prison and other legal punishments are forms of accountability and lay the groundwork for other upcoming episodes on this topic. Resources & Additional Reading [Video] Breaking Down The Prison Industrial Complex with Professor Dylan Rodriguez: "It's Not Police Brutality" Critical Resistance - Breaking Down The Prison Industrial Complex Video Series Reformist Reforms vs. Abolitionist Steps in Policing Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Beyond Prisons is back from summer break with a special double episode with Brooke Terpstra, Oaklander forever, movement veteran, and worker who organized with the Incarcerated Workers Organizer Committee (IWOC). Brooke is an organizer with the Oakland chapter of IWOC and was a member of the IWOC national media committee for the 2018 prison strike. In the first hour of this episode, Brooke walks us through incidents of prison-orchestrated violence in California, known as "Gladiator Fights." He shares the history and backstory of why California prisons are organizing these fights, dismantles the corrections department's spin on these incidents, and details the experiences of prisoners and their loved ones who are fighting for survival and to end the practice. In the second hour, Kim and Brian debrief after their conversation with Brooke. They discuss their reactions and experiences reporting on these fights and the trauma of being in proximity to the multifaceted violence of incarceration. Follow IWOC on Twitter: @IWW_IWOC IWOC Website Resources & Additional Reading The Agreement To End Hostilities by the Pelican Bay State Prison-SHU Short Corridor Hunger Strike Representatives. NOTHING NEW: CDCr Fuels and Socially Engineers Violence between Prisoners By Mutope Duguma How CDCr Undermines Peace: An Essay on Gladiator Fights by IWOC Oakland Following Hunger Strike, Corcoran Prisoners Say Negotiations With Warden Have Fallen Apart by Brian Sonenstein Corcoran Prisoners Describe Life Under Lockdown by Brian Sonenstein California Prisoners Say Videos Show ‘Gladiator Fights’ At Soledad State Prison by Brian Sonenstein More Reports Of ‘Gladiator Fights’ As California Prison Officials Tear Up Cells To Find Recording Device by Brian Sonenstein Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware