Lisa Guenther 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 hold on life and social death.

Saidiya Hartman speaks about 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 apparatus of capture and the new social formations that emerge as people flee from predatory state forms.

In early 2019 more than two thousand people deprived of their freedom inside Michigan’s Huron Valley prison for women were placed into quarantine. In this episode we discuss the action with two women who experienced the quarantine firsthand, and with Victoria Law, abolitionist activist and author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Image credit: Fatima…

In this episode we speak with three abolitionists who attended the 2018 Allied Media Conference in Detroit. Chelsea Barabas and Rodrigo Ochigame of MIT outline the reformist logic of pre-trial assessment and discuss the recent history of individualized actuarial fairness, and whether they see opportunities for data driven abolitionist organizing. Hamid Khan of the Stop…

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 immediate reflections on the…

Charlamos con Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar y Verónica Gago sobre el abolicionismo penal en relación a los tiempos álgidos de la revuelta feminista Latinoamericana. Gutiérrez es profesora de sociología e investigadora de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, especializada en movimientos indígenas en América Latina y  pasó cinco años encarcelada en el Centro de Orientación Femenina…

Joshua Clover is a professor of literature and critical theory at the University of California Davis and author of Riot. Strike. Riot. He joins this episode to discuss rebellion and incarceration in relation to the recurrent crisis of state and capital. Image credit: Leslie Machinist Subscribe via iTunes | Subscribe via RSS |Download the MP3…

In this special bonus episode we feature a timely conversation between Chicago-based True Leap Press and Lorenzo Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin. Lorenzo and JoNina discuss the current anti-fascist movement, its limitations, and how it could evolve to challenge the carceral state, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation more explicitly. Image credit: Emory Douglas Subscribe via iTunes…

Dennis Boatwright is a writer and activist in Detroit who was held captive by the state for 24 years. While imprisoned, he courageously wrote for the San Francisco Bay View and organized resistance from the inside. Today he talks with us about strategy and on-going organizing efforts among prison rebels. Image credit: Kevin “Rashid” Johnson Subscribe via iTunes | Subscribe…

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, who’s among the strikers inside a South Carolina Prison. To get more news and reports from the…

In this episode, we discuss how some of us are 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, Oakland chapter, about the lead-up to the strike and how you can get involved….

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 liberation of Native Nations, lands, and peoples. He holds a PhD…