Beyond Prison‪s‬ Beyond Prisons

Andrea Ritchie joins the show to talk about her research with the group Interrupting Criminalization, specifically their new report looking back on the “Defund the Police” demand in 2020.
Interrupting Criminalization describes itself as an initiative that aims to interrupt and end the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color for criminalized acts related to public order, poverty, child welfare, drug use, survival, and self-defense, including criminalization and incarceration of survivors of violence.
The discussion begins with a look at the work that Interrupting Criminalization does, and their findings on the various successes and failures activists have had with the “Defund” demand over the last year. Perhaps most importantly, we talk about how the state has tried to undermine abolitionist efforts. Toward the end, we speak about the need to fund experimental approaches to harm, including those that might fail.
Andrea Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant whose research, litigation, organizing, and policy advocacy has focused on policing and criminalization of women and LGBT people of color. She is the author of “Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color,” and co-author of “Challenging Criminalization: A Call for A Comprehensive Philanthropic Response; Centering Black Women, Girls, and Fem(me)s in Campaigns for Expanded Sanctuary”; “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women”; “A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV”; and “Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States.”
A nationally recognized expert on policing issues, Andrea supports and advises numerous groups across the country. She is also a frequent author of opinion pieces making critical interventions in current debates around police sexual violence, policing of young women, responses to mental health crises, and more.
Andrea is a current Researcher-in-Residence at Barnard’s Center for Research on Women. 
Visit our website beyond-prisons.com to find episode notes, resources, transcripts, and more. 

Four women with loved ones incarcerated at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, CA join the Beyond Prisons podcast to talk about how prison officials are failing to respond to the pandemic. 
Their names are Mary, Dawn, Crystal, and Alice. Nearly a year into this crisis, these women described conditions at CTF that expose a yawning gap between the picture painted in CDCR press releases and the experiences of incarcerated families. 
They explain how cold and unaccountable prison officials and politicians have been in response to basic demands for PPE, testing, and quarantining. They underscore how the suffering at CTF reaches far outside the walls and into their homes as they struggle to defend their loved ones while holding down jobs, raising children, showing up for others, and more. They also talk about the power and support they draw from one another as a group, and the importance of building this community during this crisis. 
If you haven’t heard our previous episodes on Soledad, it might help for you to go back and listen to those first. We’ve linked to them below.
Families are planning a protest for January 16 at 10 AM in Sacramento. For more information, contact Alice at Strongertogether1229@gmail.com.
Episode Notes & Resources COVID-19 Dispatch: The Crisis At Soledad (January 2021) https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-the-crisis-at-soledad
COVID-19 Dispatch From California Prison (April 2020) https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-from-california-prison
Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein
Edited by Ellis Maxwell
Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam
Theme music by Jared Ware
Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com
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 Apple Podcast, Spotify, and 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: @beyondprisonspodcast
Instagram: @beyondprisons

Brian Sonenstein interviews a woman we’re calling “Alice” to protect her and her family from retaliation from California prison officials. 
Alice was on Beyond Prisons in April 2020 to discuss the situation facing people enduring the pandemic while incarcerated at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, California.
If you haven’t heard that episode yet, you may want to listen to it first for added context: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-from-california-prison
In this conversation, Alice tells us about a recent protest held at Soledad and how women have been fighting for months for prison officials to improve health care measures inside the facility, which has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in not just the state prison system, but in California. 
She describes how corrections officers have refused to wear masks and retaliated against incarcerated people for getting CDCR to mandate them. She talks about how people are struggling to eat without access to the commissary and how unresponsive CDCR has been to family members throughout the pandemic. We also discuss how the public’s attention to COVID-19 in jails and prisons seems to be waning at a time when we’re seeing the highest case counts yet.
Families are planning a protest for January 16 at 10 AM in Sacramento. For more information, contact Alice at Strongertogether1229@gmail.com.
Episode Notes & Resources COVID-19 Dispatch From California Prison (April 2020) https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-from-california-prison

Shadowproof’s Marvel Cooke Journalism Fellowship https://shadowproof.com/2020/11/17/shadowproof-launches-marvel-cooke-journalism-fellowship/
Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein
Edited by Ellis Maxwell
Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam
Theme music by Jared Ware
Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com
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 Apple Podcast, Spotify, and 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: @beyondprisonspodcast
Instagram: @beyondprisons

Garrett Felber joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to discuss Study and Struggle, which he helped launch in 2020 as “a bilingual political education program on abolition and immigrant justice which supports and collaborates with grassroots organizations in Mississippi.”
(NOTE: This episode was recorded a few weeks before Felber was wrongfully fired by the University of Mississippi for speaking out against its racist donors and role in perpetuating the carceral state; you can find out more about what happened here.)
Felber is a former assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi and the author of Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement and the Carceral State and co-author of The Portable Malcolm X Reader with the late Manning Marable.  
He was the lead organizer of the Making and Unmaking Mass Incarceration conference and Project Director of the Parchman Oral History Project, a collaborative oral history, archival, and documentary storytelling project on incarceration in Mississippi. In 2016, Felber co-founded Liberation Literacy, an abolitionist collective inside and outside Oregon prisons.  
Felber is currently a fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, where he will be working on his next book project: We Are All Political Prisoners: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre. 
Episode Notes & Resources Study And Struggle: https://www.studyandstruggle.com/
Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469653822/those-who-know-dont-say/
Follow Garrett on Twitter: https://twitter.com/garrett_felber
Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein
Edited by Ellis Maxwell
Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam
Theme music by Jared Ware
Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com
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 Apple Podcast, Spotify, and 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: @beyondprisonspodcast
Instagram: @beyondprisons

Vicky Osterweil joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to discuss her new book, “In Defense Of Looting: A Riotous History Of Uncivil Action.”
Our wide-ranging conversation includes Vicky’s analysis of the claim that “real” and legitimate protests are nonviolent by nature, while rioting and looting constitute an act of hijacking by malevolent outside forces. 
We talk about Black women and armed resistance, and their places within the historical legacy of these tactics, as well as the differences in how these tactics are used by groups that have different relations to power. 
The conversation explores how these tactics threaten the perceived invincibility of property relations, we think about how prison riots fit within this framework, and a lot more.
Vicky Osterweil is a writer, editor, and agitator based in Philadelphia. Her book, “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action”, was released in August by Bold Type Books.
Follow her on Twitter @Vicky_ACAB
Episode Notes & Resources Buy “In Defense Of Looting” from Bold Type Books
“I wonder if you fully understand why they’ve kept you so well hidden [...] It’s not just because they want this idea of yours. But because you are an idea. A dangerous one. The idea of anarchism, made flesh. Walking amongst us.” — Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein
Edited by Ellis Maxwell
Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam
Theme music by Jared Ware
Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com
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 Apple Podcast, Spotify, and 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: @beyondprisonspodcast
Instagram: @beyondprisons

In this episode, Kim and Brian sit down with James Kilgore, a formerly incarcerated activist, researcher, and author based in Urbana, Illinois. Our conversation addressed a number of issues relating to e-carceration. We pushed back against the idea that electronic monitoring is better than prison and discussed the ways that e-carceration deprives people of liberty. We also talk about e-carceration and COVID-19, the ways that technology is being used by ICE and in pre-trial and post prison, and the ways that geofencing impacts communities. 
James Kilgore is the director of the Challenging E-Carceration project of Media Justice’s #NoDigitalPrisons campaign. He is also the co-director of the First Followers Reentry Program and the author of five books, including Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (The New Press, 2015).
Find more of James’ work on his website ChallengingECarceration.org
Follow him on Twitter @waazn1
Episode Resources & Notes “Electronic Monitoring Is Not The Answer: Critical Reflections on False Solutions” by James Kilgore
“The End of the Ankle ‘Bracelet?’” by James Kilgore
Chicago Community Bond Fund
National Council for Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls
Other Books by James:
Sister Mercy's Revenge (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016)
Prudence Couldn't Swim (Switchblade) (PM Press, 2012)
Freedom Never Rests (Jacana Media, 2012)
We Are All Zimbabweans Now (Ohio University Press, 2011)
Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein
Edited by Ellis Maxwell
Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam
Theme music by Jared Ware
Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com
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 Apple Podcast, Spotify, and 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:@beyondprisonspodcast
Instagram:@beyondprisons