Abolition as Resurrection Camille Hernandez & Jia Johnson

On this Resurrection Sunday, Camille and Jia pass the mic to directly impacted people to engage in a freedom dreaming conversation on reparations. Freedom Dreaming is about imagining into existence a world where everyone has what they need to flourish.
This episode will be co-hosted by Andrea James, JD, the Founder and Executive Director of The National Council For Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, and Richard Wallace, Founder and Executive Director of Equity and Transformation. They will be in conversation with Avalon Betts-Gaston, JD, Project Manager for IL Alliance for Reentry & Justice and Marvin Slaughter, Interim Director | The African American Leadership and Policy Institute.
They engage in an authentic and honest conversation about what reparations means to them and how their vision of reparations would change their lives, the lives of their family and community?

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RESOURCES

You Shall Not Condemn, by Dr. Jenny McBride (not available for pre-order yet)

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CONNECT WITH OUR GUESTS

Dr. Jenny McBride
Facebook: (please send message beforehand) @jennymcbride
jmcbride@mccormick.edu

Ethan
Facebook: please send message beforehand
ethanslyf8@gmail.com

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ABOUT OUR CO-HOSTS

Camille Hernandez
www.camillehernandez.com
Instagram, Twitter, TikTok: @hellocamilleh

Jia Johnson
www.jiajohnson.com
Instagram & Twitter: @jiaajohnson
Facebook: Jia Johnson

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This podcast is hosted in collaboration with McCormick Theological Seminary's Solidarity Building Initiative for Liberative Carceral Education.

If resurrection is an ushering in of a new social order where violence, exploitation, and domination don’t have the last word and rather restoration, abundance and justice reign, what is the role of reparations as we rebuild and imagine into existence resurrection as abolition?

We will be in conversation with Richard Wallace, Robin Rue Simmons, and Lisa Sharon Harper, we will define reparations, and in particular what does reparations mean to black and brown people and our collective liberation? How does the history of systemic racism and intergenerational wounds shape our vision of reparations? Drawing on the wisdom and experience of our guests, what are concrete ways they and their communities of belonging are making reparations concrete?   You will also hear from the voices of people directly impacted by the criminal punishment system.  They will share what reparations means to them, and how their vision would change their lives and the lives of their family?

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ABOUT OUR HOSTS

Camille Hernandez
www.camillehernandez.com
Instagram, Twitter, TikTok: @hellocamilleh

Jia Johnson
www.jiajohnson.com
Instagram & Twitter: @jiaajohnson
Facebook: Jia Johnson

In this episode Camille read a poem by Dr. Martina McGowan entitled “A new song” from her book entitled I am the Rage. This poem is an honest reflection on what it takes to build an abolitionist reality in the midst of the everyday the harm we’re experiencing.

Building off of last week’s episode, with public health vs. public safety in mind, we will wrestle with the criminalization of mental health.  Research shows that nearly half the people in U.S. jails and more than a third of those in U.S. prisons have been diagnosed with a mental illness. In conversation with Rev. Naomi Washington Leaphart and Willette Benford, we will ask: How did American prisons and jails become one of the largest mental health providers in the country?  How can we begin to challenge and change the harmful, stimagmizing narratives that criminalize people with the experience of incarceration?  Drawing on the wisdom and experience of our guests, how can we engage in a more restorative response towards people impacted by the criminal punishment system?   How do these practices point us towards an abolition world?

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ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a Black-queer church girl, preacher, teacher, and activist. She develops spaces of spiritual candor, disruption, reflection, transformation, and action. Rev. Naomi is an adjunct professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and is the founder of Salt | Yeast | Light. She also serves the city of Philadelphia as the Director for Faith-Based and Interfaith Affairs in the Mayor's Office. She shares life with her wife, their teenage daughter, and a hound dog girl and a black cat boy.

Minister Willette Benford, is a mother, leader, social justice advocate, sought-after speaker and systems survivor. Minister Benford spent over two decades inside the Carceral system punished for a survival crime. Minister Benford benefited from a change in the law in 2016 which amended the Illinois Criminal Code and made domestic violence a mitigating factor in sentencing. This resulted in her being the first woman in the State of Illinois to benefit from this new law retroactively and given an immediate release in February of 2019 after serving over 24 years in the Carceral system.

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SHOW NOTES

"Be Nobody's Darling" by Alice Walker
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/be-nobody-s-darling/

I’m this meditation episode Camille briefly discusses the connections between mental illness and the prison industrial complete. She reads a poem by Ra Avis from her book Sack Nasty: Prison Poetry by Ra Avis.