Episodes
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Survival Pending Abolition
Longtime abolitionists, thinkers, writers, activists, militants: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Kim Wilson, and Amanda Alexander discuss revolutionary survival amidst pandemia and how abolitionist struggle is making the 'impossible' become possible.
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“I’m fighting for my life right now”
This past weekend we spoke again with our friend-comrade Bruce X at Macomb correctional facility in Michigan. Bruce X has been warning us of this tragedy for weeks now. Last time we spoke with him, he refused to go back to his cell because his bunkmate was sick. He’s asthmatic. As a result, he…
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Updates about the dire situation inside Macomb prison in Michigan
As of today (3/27/2020), there are 24 confirmed cases of Cov-19 inside Michigan prisons. Two weeks ago, we spoke with Bruce “X” Parker about the situation inside Macomb prison and he warned us about what would happen if no action was taken. The Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC)- even…
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Why are so many Michigan prisoners on quarantine?
Prisoners in several Michigan prisons are currently on quarantine — being subjected to the absolute and arbitrary sovereign will of the MDOC with little to no possibility of redress. We hear from Bruce X — a comrade quarantined at Macomb correctional facility, located just north of Detroit — who...
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Crimmigration and Internationalist Abolition
In this episode the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, an internationalist abolitionist organization, speaks about their fight against criminalization. They discuss how a rejection of “good immigrant” versus “bad immigrant” narratives takes form in their work, how the committee strategically...
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Prisons on Hunger Strike in Argentina
Thousands of prisoners in Argentina are on hunger strike. We speak with militant intellectual Liliana Cabrera about her experience inside Argentinean jails, her involvement with the organization Yo no fui, and also about this extraordinary event of the global prisoner resistance movement.
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Abolitionist Study with Steve Wilson
Black and queer abolitionist writer Stevie Wilson, held captive by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, was recently released from solitary confinement. He speaks about the importance of abolitionist study as a space of common encounter that undermines the hold that the carceral state has…
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A strategy of disruption: Thinking through the prison strike as an abolitionist tactic
Three years after the nationwide September 2016 prison strikes, abolitionist intellectual "HH" re-joins us on the show. "HH" speaks about what the few months before the prison strikes looked like from inside Michigan’s Kinross prison and we discuss the tactical advantages of the strike within an...
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Ohio Prisoners Speak! A Year After the 2018 Nationwide Prison Strike
In this special bonus episode, released on the anniversary of the 2018 nationwide prison strike, we speak with two Ohio prisoners-- David Easley and Mark Houston (aka Mustafa) -- who called us from inside Toledo Correctional Institution. Both Easley and Mustafa were involved in the 2018 prison...
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Democracia y Dictadura: el estado carcelario Chileno y resistencias abolicionistas
Hablamos con Patricio Azócar Donoso sobre los aparatos carcelarios que se despliegan dentro de los territorios que hoy se conocen como Chile -- desde la dictadura hasta la llamada transición democrática. Patricio traza tanto la emergencia del punitivismo corporativo que capitaliza la miseria de…
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Prison Labor and Industrial Penology
Charlie Bright speaks about the re-articulations of carceral narratives: from the era of Fordism through discourses on modernization and the desperate rehabilitation of the rehabilitative model. Bright discusses how a century’s worth of constant re-negotiations of the coherence of departments of...
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The Death Penalty, Sovereignty, and Abolition
Lisa Guenther, currently a professor of philosophy at Queen’s University in so-called Ontario, Canada, deconstructs the state’s right to kill or let live within settler-colonial & racial capitalist social relations. We also discuss abolitionist forms of relationality that interrupt sovereignty’s...
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Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments Feat. Saidiyah Hartman
Saidiya Hartman speaks about her latest book, Wayward Lives: Beautiful Experiments Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, and the beauty, autonomy, anarchy, fugitivity, queerness, and errancy in forms of Black sociality — what she calls waywardness. We also discuss how to interrupt the state’s...
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Pill or Punishment: Involuntary Medication at a Michigan's Women's Prison
On January 2019, more than two thousand women confined at Michigan’s only women’s prison were put in quarantine. The quarantine comes in the wake of a possible scabies outbreak at the facility -- which has a long history of abuse and multiple cases of medical neglect. While many of the women held...
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Abolish Risk Assessment
"Predictive" instruments are common currency within the carceral reform movement. In this episode we speak with three abolitionists --Rodrigo Ochigame, Chelsea Barabas, and Hamid Khan-- to contextualize the use of pre-trial assessments and algorithmic policing tools by technocratic stalker state.
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Letters from inside: The 2018 Prison Strike
In the thick of the 2018 prison strike, we published a notice in the San Francisco Bay View -- the extraordinary monthly Black newspaper which circulates through hundreds of prisons and other centers of detention in the United States -- asking those on the inside to write to us with their…
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Ni Una Menos en las Cárceles
Nos encontramos frente a la difícil tarea de entablar un diálogo más allá del rustbelt, más allá del “cinturón oxidado,” más allá de esos territorios y poblaciones como Detroit y Flint, zonas de abandono organizado y violencia organizada del Estado y el capitalismo racial. Es decir, nos…
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Riots, Crisis, and Prisons
In this episode, we speak with Joshua Clover, author of Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings and professor of literature and critical theory at the University of California Davis, about the ongoing crisis of racial capitalism and its relation to riots and the carceral state.
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Anti-Fascism and Carceral State feat. Lorenzo Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin
In this special bonus episode, we present a conversation between True Leap Press and Lorenzo Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin, recorded in Chicago earlier last month. Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin is an anarchist writer, organizer, and former political prisoner who came up through the Black Panther Party in...
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Political Organizing Behind the Walls
In this episode, we speak with Michigan-based writer and activist Dennis Boatwright. Dennis was held captive by the state for 24 years of his life and has written about the strategies and politics of the prisoner resistance movement. We speak with him in the wake of the two most massive prison...
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Reports from the 2018 Prison Strike
As reports of the 2018 prison strike actions and state retaliation continue to come in, we speak with Amani Sawari, organizer and media contact with Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, about ways to support prison rebels. We also hear from J, a prison rebel who’s among the strikers inside a South Carolina...
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Prelude to the 2018 Prisoner Strike
Preparing for the upcoming 2018 Prisoner Strike -- slated to take place between August 21st and September 9th -- we speak with members of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee of the IWW about the lead-up to the strike and how you can get involved. This year’s actions come in the wake of...
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Native Resistance and the Carceral State
Nick Estes identifies the anti-Indian origins of the carceral state within the U.S. settler colonial project and argues that indigenous liberation offers critical frameworks for understanding how to abolish it. Estes is a co-founder of The Red Nation: an anti-profit coalition dedicated to the...
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Abolishing Electronic Incarceration
In this episode, “Abolishing Electronic Incarceration”, co-producer a Maria speaks with Myaisha Hayes and James Kilgore about the movement to challenge the widening use of “electronic monitoring devices,” or ankle shackles. Myaisha is the National Organizer of Criminal Justice & Technology at the...
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Specters of Attica: Reflections from Inside a Michigan Prison Strike
On the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, hundreds imprisoned inside Michigan’s Kinross Correctional Facility refused to report to work or lock down in their barracks. Instead, they joined the largest prisoner labor strike in U.S. history. Rustbelt Abolition Radio co-produced this...
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Border as Method
In this episode we speak with Sandro Mezzadra, who has written extensively about borders and migration, such as in a book he co-authored with Brett Neilson titled “Border as Method.” He talks about the processes of bordering that extend far beyond the walls we usually think about when we speak of...
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On Carceral Capitalism
This episode features Jackie Wang and her recently released collection of essays titled “Carceral Capitalism.” She provides a framework to understand how racial capitalism produces gratuitous violence against Black bodies as well as profit-generating technologies of extraction -- from Ferguson to...
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Out but not free: Surviving after Women’s Prison
This episode features Karmyn, a writer and artist who was discharged from Michigan’s Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility after being locked up for 7 years. She speaks about the struggle to maintain a sense of self during and after imprisonment, and how the fear of state retaliation…
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Dispatches from Zapatista Territory
In this episode, “Dispatches from Zapatista Territory,” we speak with two of our fellow co-producers about their recent trip to autonomous Zapatista communities in the highlands of the Mexican southeast. For more than 24 years, the Zapatistas have inspired countless struggles across the globe to...
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Carceral Ableism and Disability Justice
In this episode: Carceral Ableism and Disability Justice, we explore the ways in which the framework of “carceral ableism” redraws our map of racial capitalism’s archipelago of confinement, and how the liberatory praxis of disability justice works to extend and deepen the abolitionist horizon.…
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Settler-colonialism and the Struggle for Abolition
This episode grapples with the relation between incarceration and settler colonialism. Kelly Lytle Hernández, abolitionist writer and professor of History and African American studies at the University of California-Los Angeles, discusses her latest book, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and...
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State Repression and Movement Defense
This episode turns to questions of political repression, movement defense, and solidarity with political prisoners - questions which have been accentuated in the wake of the massive legal attacks visited upon protesters who participated in the #J20 demonstration in Washington D.C. on the day of...
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Bonus: Education, Fascism, and Abolition: A conversation with George Ciccariello Maher
In this bonus episode, we speak with Dr. George Ciccariello-Maher, Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University. Placed on forced leave by Drexel, he is among a growing number of academics subjected to retaliation for their critiques of white supremacy and openly…
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Beyond Policing
In this episode we take a critical look at the liberal discourse of police reform, which has increasingly gained prominence amidst the ever-recurring specter of racist police violence, and especially in the wake of black rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore, and the intensification of North...
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Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Fred Williams)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan who witnessed and lived through the historic September 2016 prison strike. In this segment we hear the voice of Fred Williams. Fred Williams is a...
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Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Harold Gonzales)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan who witnessed and lived through the historic September 2016 prison strike. In this segment we hear the voice of Harold Gonzales. Abolitionist...
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Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Ahjamu Baruti)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan who witnessed and lived through the historic September 2016 prison strike. In this segment we hear the voice of Ahjamu Baruti. Ahjamu Baruti is a...
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Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Jake Klemp)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan who witnessed and lived through the historic September 2016 prison strike. In this segment we hear the voice of Jake Klemp. Jake Klemp is a vegan...
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Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Baba X Guy)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan who witnessed and lived through the historic September 2016 prison strike. In this segment we hear the voice of Baba X Guy. Baba X-Guy was…
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Reports from the Prisoner Resistance Movement
In Reports from the Prisoner Resistance Movement, released on the anniversary of the 1971 Attica prison rebellion, we reflect on the intensifying political struggles behind bars by examining two extraordinary flashpoints: Amerika’s nationwide September 9, 2016, prisoner strike, and the August 19,...
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Schools, Prisons, and Abolitionist Futures
In today’s episode, “Schools, prisons and Abolitionist futures”, we explore the parallels by which the institutions of prisons and schools work to reproduce our current society, and how they illuminate challenges in the rocky passageways toward abolition. We speak with imprisoned intellectual...
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Beyond Punishment: The Movement for Transformative Justice
Abolitionists are committed to creating a world without police and prisons, but what alternative visions and practices of addressing intimate harm might point the way toward such a world? In this episode we explore efforts to re-imagine the politics of violence, harm, safety, and redress,...
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Queering Abolition
In this episode we examine the relationships between carcerality, gendered and sexual violence on the one hand, and on the other: queer and trans liberation and the abolitionist horizon. Josue Saldivar and Karolina Lopez from the Arizona-based organization Mariposas Sin Fronteras discuss the ways...
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Abolition and the Commons
In this episode we explore the relationship between the abolitionist horizon and the defense and reinvention of the commons. We speak with author and historian Peter Linebaugh about the ways the carceral state is founded upon enclosure and dispossession, and about hidden histories of collective...
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To Make Our World Anew: May Day special ft. Robin D.G. Kelley
In this special May Day segment of Rustbelt Abolition Radio, we speak with acclaimed scholar Robin D.G. Kelley to explore the critique of racial capitalism, the history of class struggle across the color line, and the abolitionist horizon. We release this episode on May Day, or International...
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Survival and Resistance: Women Organizing towards Abolition
In this episode we focus on the ways women are organizing against gendered violence and mass criminalization -- and for a world free of domination. We speak with Mariame Kaba, long-time abolitionist organizer and writer, about her work with groups like Survived and Punished and Project NIA, and…
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Bonus: Free Bresha Now!
In this special bonus segment of Rustbelt Abolition Radio, we speak with long-time prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba about the Free Bresha Campaign.
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Bonus: From Attica to Kinross - An extended interview with Heather Ann Thompson
In this special bonus segment of Rustbelt Abolition Radio, we return to renowned historian Heather Ann Thompson as she elaborates on the multifaceted origins of the historic 1971 Attica Uprising, drawing out their resonances with other prison rebellions across history and geography, as well as...
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The Riots Will Continue
In this episode we examine the expansion of the carceral state as a response to anti-racist movements and urban rebellions of the 1960s, the political economic underpinnings of these social transformations, and the ways in which historic instances of prisoner rebellion are continuous with...
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No walls, no cages: From migrant justice to prison abolition
In this episode we focus on the joint struggle for migrant justice and prison abolition. We feature migrant justice and abolitionist organizers Aly Wayne and Abraham Paulos, and discuss the tensions between demanding citizenship and fighting for freedom. We close the show with two firsthand...
About this show
Rustbelt Abolition Radio (RAR) is an abolitionist movement-building media project. Full episode transcripts are available on our website.
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