In this episode we explore ways that people are working to build a more caring and care-full world, and to address the harms of our carceral systems whether they are prisons, jails, or hospitals. Some of the people we talk to are interested in engaging with Washington State to change systems, and others are more interested in finding ways to do care otherwise, outside of state systems. This episode features the words of Scout Smedley, SYP, Cindi Fisher, Joshua Wallace, Lauara Van Tosh, Chris Carney, Shaun Glaze, and LeTania Severe, as well as Patreece Spence. We'd like to dedicate this episode, and the whole series to those who lost their lives or their loved ones' lives – physically or socially - to carceral systems; and to all who have devoted their lives to creating a more just, caring future, one where we aren't relying on cages or confinement to solve social problems. Thank you!

In-Care-Ceration was written and produced by Leah Montange and Meredith Ruff.

In this episode we talk about mental and physical healthcare in Washington's prisons. We speak with Tony Tyson, Queen J, and Darnell Jones, all incarcerated voices in our state, who talk to us about accessing care in prison, and also what they or the people around them have done to get or create care. Content warning: this episode includes first-hand accounts of medical neglect and suicidality in prison.

In-Care-Ceration was written and produced by Leah Montange and Meredith Ruff.

In this episode we talk about mental health in jails – what mental health care looks like in jails, how people with disabilities navigate and experience jail, and how activists and organizers have addressed the mental health crisis in urban jails in Washington. We speak with Jordan Landry, Tony Tyson, Leslie McCallum, KL Shannon and Patreece Spence. Content warning: this episode includes first-hand accounts of police violence, unhealthy jail conditions, and suicidal ideation.

In-Care-Ceration was written and produced by Leah Montange and Meredith Ruff.

In this episode, we take on the topic of civil commitment and experience. We address hospitalization, the emergency room, and the perspectives of people who work in the system and who receive treatment. We address ways that civil commitment resembles incarceration. We speak to SYP and Laura Van Tosh, and feature the words of Cindi Fisher – all people whose lives and advocacy have intersected with the civil commitment system. This episode contains descriptions of civil commitment and emergency rooms, including discussions of suicidality. Music by Scout Smedley and editing by Nest Audio Co.

In-Care-Ceration was written and produced by Leah Montange and Meredith Ruff.

In this episode, we take on forensic commitment, the psychiatric commitment of those who are facing criminal charges but are legally considered not competent to stand trial We unpack how the jail and state hospital systems are connected with each other through forensic commitment, and how there is a surplus of people in the jails who are awaiting space for beds to open up in the state hospital system. This has created pressure for an expansion of forensic commitment space in the state hospital system, something that abolitionists and reformers have addressed. We speak with Chris Carney (Carney & Gillespie) again, as well as abolitionist, street medic and nurse SYP, and prison abolition activist Scout Smedley. Music by Scout Smedley and editing by Nest Audio Co.

In-Care-Ceration was written and produced by Leah Montange and Meredith Ruff.

In episode one, we introduce this series' central questions: what do the mental health system and the criminal legal system have to do with one another? More to the point, how is improving care in Washington contributing to the expansion of jails, prisons and other spaces of confinement? We frame the whole series by outlining ways that care and incarceration are entangled with one another in Washington State. This episode features the voices of Chris Carney (Carney Gillespie) as well as Shaun Glaze (Black Brilliance Research) and LeTania Severe (Black Brilliance Research and Seattle Solidarity Budget). Music by Scout Smedley and editing by Nest Audio Co.

In-Care-Ceration was written and produced by Leah Montange and Meredith Ruff.

In-care-ceration is a documentary podcast about how Washington's so-called mental health system is entangled with the carceral system. How do people in need of mental health care end up losing their freedom, whether in a hospital, jail, or prison? How do these institutions care for people? Do they care for people at all? Are community calls for a more caring system having their intended impact?

We especially tune in to how improving care is a guise for expanding confinement and coercion. The podcast episodes feature voices from advocates and people who have experience in the jail, prison or mental health systems. We hope that this podcast can support future campaigns to stop carceral expansion.

About the Producers / Co-Hosts

Leah Montange is a human geographer who words toward prison and immigration detention abolition in the PNW. She teaches, writes, and creates media (like this podcast).

Meredith Ruff is an attorney turned bureaucrat (oh no!). She has been organizing with people in prison since 2017.

For this episode I sat down with Garrett Felber to talk about their new book, A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre. The book is described by Dr. Orisanmi Burton, author of Tip of the Spear, as "A rigorous examination of Sostre's revolutionary life that offers vital lessons for those seeking to carry on the struggle."

I began our conversation by asking Garret about what motivated them to write the book in the first place. We then focus our discussion on what they learned about Sostre throughout the process. Garrett's clear writing and insightful analysis offers us a layered and complex understanding of Sostre's life and work. Our conversation highlights Sostre's evolving political vision and practice, the relevance of his organizing for our current political moment, and how his skillful use of the courts in the fight for prisoner's rights is foundational for understanding the broader abolitionist struggle.

Garrett Felber is an educator, writer, and organizer. They are the author of Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State, and coauthor of The Portable Malcolm X Reader, with Manning Marable. Felber is a cofounder of the abolitionist collective Study and Struggle and is currently building a radical mobile library, the Free Society People's Library, in Portland, Oregon.

AVAILABLE NOW! A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre, by Garrett Felber

Virtual Book Launch hosted by Haymarket and AK Press feat. a conversation between Garrett Felber and Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

A Continuous Struggle is a political biography of one of the most important revolutionary figures of the twentieth century in the United States. Martin Sostre (1923–2015) was a Black Puerto Rican from East Harlem who became a politicized prisoner and jailhouse lawyer, winning cases in the early 1960s that helped secure the constitutional rights of incarcerated people. He opened one of the country's first radical Black bookstores and was scapegoated and framed by police and the FBI following the Buffalo rebellion of 1967. He was sentenced by an all-white jury to thirty-one to forty-one years.

Throughout his nine-year imprisonment, Sostre transformed himself and the revolutionary movements he was a part of, eventually identifying as a revolutionary anarchist and laying the foundation for contemporary Black anarchism. During that time, he engaged in principled resistance to strip frisks for which he was beaten eleven times, raising awareness about the routinized sexual assault of imprisoned people. The decade-long Free Martin Sostre movement was one of the greatest and most improbable defense campaign victories of the Black Power era, alongside those to liberate Angela Davis and Huey Newton. Although Sostre receded from public view after his release in 1976, he lived another four decades of committed struggle as a tenant organizer and youth mentor in New York and New Jersey. Throughout his long life, Martin Sostre was a jailhouse lawyer, revolutionary bookseller, yogi, mentor and teacher, anti-rape organizer, housing justice activist, and original political thinker. The variety of strategies he used and terrains on which he struggled emphasize the necessity and possibility of multi-faceted and continuous struggle against all forms of oppression in pursuit of an egalitarian society founded on the principles of "maximum human freedom, spirituality, and love."

LINKS

Study and Struggle is a collective concentrated in Mississippi that organizes towards abolition through political education, mutual aid, and community building across prison walls. We believe that study and struggle are necessary, complementary parts of any revolutionary movement, and that dismantling the prison industrial complex (PIC) requires centering criminalized people.

Justice for Geraldine and Martin – Martin Sostre and Geraldine (Robinson) Pointer's names should have been cleared after they were framed. Sign the petition to support our effort to make what's been delayed for far too long a reality for these two transformational former political prisoners.

Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein

Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam

Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com.

Support our show by making a tax deductible donation here.

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

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Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

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In this episode I sat down with the amazing Jennifer Viets for a conversation about her work as a restorative justice practitioner in Chicago. We begin by talking about Jennifer's experience with being a grandmother including pushing back against societal expectations, how her work shifted from being individually focused to more community oriented, and we explore some of the lessons she's learned from being a circle keeper about being in right-relationship with others.

Jennifer Viets(she/her/hers) has worked as a Restorative Justice Practitioner for the past 15 years. She is currently the Alternative Resolution Pathways Specialist in the Office of Student Protections for Chicago Public Schools and for the previous four years worked as a Restorative Practices Coach in the Office of Social Emotional Learning. Her work in the community involves training community Circle Keepers and supporting restorative processes. She has also worked as a multi-disciplinary teaching artist and arts administrator with children and families for the past 30 years using the arts to reach, teach and heal. This work has included designing programming for children and adults in hospitals as well as other institutional settings. She is also a proud mother and grandmother.

Welcome to episode three of "Over the Wall: The Abolitionist Hour with Critical Resistance." For listeners new to Beyond Prisons or our collaboration with Critical Resistance, this is a new, regular series that premiered in September of 2023. Hosted by members of Critical Resistance's The Abolitionist Editorial Collective, "Over the Wall" discusses articles and key interventions made by Critical Resistance's cross-wall, bilingual newspaper, The Abolitionist. This special episode focuses on both issues of the newspaper that Critical Resistance (CR) published in 2024: Issue 41 on ecological justice that printed in June and Issue 42 on anti-war organizing that printed in December. Episode 3 is titled, "For a Livable Future: Building Movements to Stop War and Save the Planet," and Dylan and Molly are back, analyzing the shifting political terrain ahead and what this means for organizing against the prison industrial complex (PIC), against war, warmaking, and militarism, for ecological justice and collective liberation. Together, they discuss key articles within both Issues 41 and 42, which foreground organized resistance to climate change, ecological collapse and crisis, war, genocide and imperialism, alongside policing and imprisonment. This episode includes a few contributing authors of both issues, including Rehana Lerandeau, Eva Dickerson, Judah Schept, Masai Ehehosi (who Issue 42 is dedicated to), Misty Pegram, and Tia Marie. Issue 41 is available for free download on CR's website, along with some early release articles from Issue 42 while the latest issue is still in print circulation. Check out the newspaper, Issue 41 in full and the Issue 42 sneak peeks, as well as all past issues at: criticalresistance.org/abolitionist. The time is always right to support radical political education! Subscribe today to receive your own copy of each issue and support circulation of the paper to imprisoned people. Every single paid subscription on the outside allows CR to send the paper to thousands of people locked up inside prisons, jails, and detention centers to receive this valuable political education resource FOR FREE! Go to: criticalresistance.org/subscribe-to-the-abolitionist to sign up for a sliding scale subscription to the paper, or to sign up an imprisoned loved one to receive a copy of our next issue.

Announcements:

Support one of CR's closest movement partner organizations–The Freedom Archives by giving a donation this year-end or new-year season. The Freedom Archives is an essential movement history resource based in the Bay Area that is celebrating 25 years since its founding. The Freedom Archives contains over 12,000 hours of audio and video recordings as well as print materials dating primarily from the late-1960s to the mid-90s. These collections chronicle the progressive history of the Bay Area, the United States, and international movements for liberation and social justice more broadly. The Freedom Archives have been an ongoing resource for CR's editorial collective, helping us with research and archiving each of our issues of The Abolitionist. Check out the archives online and donate today: freedomarchives.org. Host Bios:

Dylan Brown is a 24-year-old Black organizer and educator based in New York City, and has been a member of Critical Resistance since 2020. As a member of the New York City chapter of Critical Resistance, Dylan is organizing within the Abolish ICE New York/New Jersey Coalition on their current NY Dignity Not Detention campaign, which seeks to build power to end immigrant detention throughout NY State. For the past three years, Dylan has been an editor for The Abolitionist Newspaper. Molly Porzig is a Bay Area based organizer and educator in California with nearly 20 years of organizing experience with Critical Resistance (CR). Molly is currently CR's National Media & Communications Manager, as well as the organization's project manager of The Abolitionist. Contributor Bios / Guest Interviews: Eva Dickerson: Starseed eva (they/themme/baby girl) believes in a freer, greener future and is on a journey alongside their world-expanding friends to get there. The apple of their eye is the city of Atlanta, where they live, work, play, and experiment with the people in the city about how we might practice a more compassionate way of being together. Much of their organizing in the city is concentrated within the Ashview Heights, Vine City, West End, Bush Mountain, and now Gresham Park neighborhoods where their abolitionist ideology comes to life by way of childcare collectives, neighborhood farmers markets, community gardens, popular education campaigns, and earth-based projects. Rehana Lerandeau: Rehana is the National Membership Organizer for Critical Resistance (CR). Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Rehana's roots flow from her hometown of Oakland. A previous member of CR's Oakland chapter, Rehana supports CR members develop abolitionist projects and campaigns across our chapter regions of Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland, New York, and (newly) Kentucky. In Atlanta, Rehana is supporting the campaign to stop Cop City and the campaign to end the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE). Judah Schept is a Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia (New York University Press, 2022) and Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion (NYU Press, 2015). He is co-editor of The Jail is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration (Verso Books, 2024). Judah has been active for more than two decades with organizations and campaigns fighting for decarceration and abolition. Masai Ehehosi was a co-founder of Critical Resistance and the organization's longest standing member who passed away April 1, 2024. A Muslim, and Co-Minister of Information for the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, Masai had over over 50 years of experience organizing for Black liberation in the New Afrikan independence movement. Learn more about Masai's extensive movement contributions in Issue 42 in the Feature Reflection piece, or on CR's website: criticalresistance.org/updates/long-live-masai-ehehosi Misty Pegram: A Filipina organizer with the Education Committee of the International Cancel RIMPAC Campaign and a member of Anakbayan Hawai'i, Misty is currently living in the illegally occupied kingdom of Hawai'i, on the island of O'ahu in Waikiki.

Tia Marie: Tia is a Hawaiian youth organizer with Hawai'i Peace & Justice also based on O'ahu, born and raised in the Punahou neighborhood north of Honolulu, near Manoa Falls.

Music Credits: Show theme song: "Taste of Freedom" by Steven Beddall Transition sound effects: "I Wish - drum loop" by Artlist Original and "Organic Drum Loops - Chill Calipso Groove" by AMUSIA Follow Critical Resistance on X/Twitter at @C_Resistance or on Instagram @criticalresistance

For this episode Kim sat down with long-time educator and organizer, Anya Tanyavutti for a conversation about her contribution titled "Shelter and Shower Toward Abolition: A Reflection on Collective Care, Reproductive Justice, and Educational Justice."

Anya Tanyavutti has 25 years of experience working in the fields of education and nonprofit leadership. She earned her Bachelor's in Elementary Education and Masters in Socio-Cultural Studies and Educational Thought, from Western Michigan University. Anya is a trained birthworker and a 3 time alum of the Jade T. Perry Cecilia Weston Spiritual Academy.

Her work history has included executive leadership of a birth justice organization, a Community Schools department, and youth development program administration, teaching, and DEIB consultation. Ms. Tanyavutti is currently the Executive Director of Changing Worlds, an Arts nonprofit serving CPS.

Lastly, Ms.Tanyavutti is the survivor of a tragic postpartum stroke, predicted only by her race. She is the proud mother of three amazing children who are the realization of their ancestor's dreams and work everyday to build a more decolonized world in big and small ways for and with the collective.

This is the fourth installment of our new series, Lessons From The Garden, where Kim will be interviewing contributors to the anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar titled We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. You can order this volume now from Haymarket or wherever you buy books.

Order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson

IN STORES NOV. 19, 2024!

Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "What if abolition is something that grows?" As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations.

In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice.

HELP SEND THIS BOOK INSIDE: Contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails by donating at https://haymarketbooks.app.neoncrm.com/forms/we-grow-the-world-together

Links

You can reach out to Anya through her website: Tandem Works

Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein

Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam

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 [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast

Instagram:@beyondprisons