Beyond Prisons

CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL VIOLENCE, CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE Sarah K. Tyson joins Beyond Prisons for a conversation about her work as a philosopher, anti-violence advocate, and prison educator. We explore the contradiction between anti-violence work and its reliance on the criminal punishment system, what it's like to do philosophy in prison, the importance of building relationships with people inside, and so much more.  Sarah Tyson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Affiliated Faculty of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado, Denver. Her research focuses on questions of authority, history, and exclusion with a particular interest in voices that have been marginalized in the history of thinking. She has published essays in: Death and Other Penalties: Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration; Deconstructing the Death Penalty: Derrida's Seminars and the New Abolitionism; Feminist Philosophy Quarterly; Hypatia; Metaphilosophy; and Radical Philosophy Review. She also edited with Joshua Hall, Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass Incarceration. She recently published Where Are the Women? Why Expanding the Archive Makes Philosophy Better, which focuses on women in the history of philosophy and argues for engagement with thinkers not typically considered philosophers, including Sojourner Truth.  Resources Feminism and the Carceral State: Gender-Responsive Justice, Community Accountability, and the Epistemology of Antiviolence. (Brady T. Heiner and Sarah K. Tyson, 2017) Experiments in Responsibility: Pocket Parks, Radical Anti-Violence Work, and the Social Ontology of Safety (Sarah K. Tyson, 2014) 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

Maya Schenwar returns to Beyond Prisons to discuss voting rights, the current political landscape, and her forthcoming book. Maya is the Editor-in-Chief of Truthout. She is also the author of "Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better" and the co-editor of the Truthout anthology "Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States." She has written about the prison-industrial complex for Truthout, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, Ms. Magazine, and others. Maya lives in Chicago and organizes with the abolitionist collective Love & Protect. She is the co-author of an upcoming book with Victoria Law, tentatively titled, "Your Home Is Your Prison," which they hope to release next spring. Follow Maya on Twitter @MayaSchenwar Additional Reading: Allowing People in Prison to Vote Shouldn’t Be Controversial by Maya Schenwar The Shameful Moralizing On Prisoner Voting Rights by Brian Sonenstein Thoughts On Hand-Wringing Over Prisoner Voting Rights by Kim Wilson Florida’s Amendment 4 Pushes Back On Tradition Of Social Death For People With Convictions by Kim Wilson Voting Rights Act of 1965 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

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   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/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

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!

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/ 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 Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

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/ 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 Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music by Jared Ware

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]. 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 Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music by Jared Ware

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) 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 Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

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. 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 Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

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. 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 Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/