Shrinks on Third Shrinks on Third

Revisting our spontaneous chat with Joyce E. Russell, RN, the mother of Assata Thomas, Director of the Institute for Community Justice. Assata’s mom accompanied her to our planned podcast session and sat in the waiting room while we talked to Assata about the social activism and justice work she is passionate about (you can hear the convo on our Prison Services and Reentry podcast). Afterward, we thought it would be nice to have Mom in the interview to talk for a few minutes about her daughter. Once we turned on the mic, we found out that Joyce has her own stories of social justice work having spent years as a nurse in a prison. She spoke about how the work changed her, and her ever-growing deep pride in her family which now has yet another generation of social justice warriors coming up.

Another podcast we're running again because it means so much to us. From their website: "LifeLines is a media and cultural project conducted in extensive, long-term collaboration with people serving Life Death By Incarceration (also known as Life Without Parole) sentences in Pennsylvania. The project uses interviews, visual art, creative media interventions, and sound installations to support the statewide campaign to abolish Death By Incarceration. We use the term “LifeLines” to refer to the fact that this project highlights the stories and analysis of those serving life/death sentences and to point toward the many collective relationships and infrastructures of support (familial, community, activist, and beyond) that are forged in resistance to mass imprisonment."

Learning about Juneteenth, which we should have known about all along, is so important that we're rerunning this one in advance of the upcoming holiday. 

Originally aired in October 2020 to begin uncovering as much as we could about our truthful past with RedLining – a practice that purposely maintained segregation through discrimination in lending. We discuss its racist history, how it promoted both segregation and the wealth gap, and the continued forms it takes even today. 
A couple of books we mentioned to learn more about RedLining: 
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
NationalFairHousing.org

The session (originally from Feb 2020) with L’Oréal McCollum in which we learn about Art with Impact (AWI), a nonprofit that uses film and theatre to encourage young people to explore mental health and wellness through art. L’Oreal is a Philadelphia based sexuality and mental health educator, a consultant, and an actress. 
www.artwithimpact.org

The session, originally from February 2020,  in which we talk to Norberto ‘Rob’ Rosa, who at the time was Associate Vice President of Operations at New Leash on Life USA. New Leash is a nonprofit prison-dog training program improving the lives of people in prison and saving the lives of dogs. In this program, incarcerated people are paired with rejected dogs for training, and end up improving each other’s lives in countless ways.  New Leash believes that everyone deserves a second chance.