Why am I squeezing in a conference before I go on medical leave? Because it's my favorite conference of the year. These are the people I want to be with when so many things are going wrong. For those of you who aren't at @socialismconference.org, here are some remarks I shared today.
Oh dear, I forgot to keep the link in there after the excerpt was too long. Of course it’s from this most recent @storiesforpower.bsky.social episode: www.creative-interventions.org/sfp/abolitio...
![“And it also allows for the really slow world building work that it promises it will deliver. And so I think the both and part of abolition feminism really comes from the way that it’s alive and it’s living and it’s experimental and it changes over time, but it gives us something to kind of wrap ourselves in or hold onto as something that’s moving in a direction toward freedom. I think if you [00:27:00] try to do abolition without feminism, or if you are a feminist and don’t understand what abolition is required of you, then I think you miss that long arc that you described.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6zbuc76mmqgzyq76jn5glcz2/bafkreicbcnkcyakabtnwfi4lleyrv77f4mzwcaeukpywsidj2qto2wudbi)
“And it also allows for the really slow world building work that it promises it will deliver. And so I think the both and part of abolition feminism really comes from the way that it’s alive and it’s living and it’s experimental and it changes over time, but it gives us something to kind of wrap ourselves in or hold onto as something that’s moving in a direction toward freedom. I think if you [00:27:00] try to do abolition without feminism, or if you are a feminist and don’t understand what abolition is required of you, then I think you miss that long arc that you described.”
This part of the lineage of abolition where I’ve found my own homes — deeply informed by abolition feminism, I would say — has always been one of the treasures for me. Something to hold onto that’s moving toward freedom.
Dr. Richie was a founding board member of The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African Community, The National Network for Women in Prison, and a founding member of INCITE!: Women of Color Against Violence.
Listen to the full episode:
Dr. Richie is the co-author of Abolition. Feminism. Now. with Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent and Erica Meiners. Her earlier book Compelled to Crime: the Gender Entrapment of Black Battered Women, was pivotal framing the current work to free criminalized survivors from carceral systems.
The emphasis of her scholarly and activist work has been on the ways that race/ethnicity and social position affect the experience of violence and criminalization, focusing on the experiences of Black women and gender non-conforming people.
🐚Ep011: Abolition Feminisms
🎙️Meet our guest Beth Richie:
Beth E. Richie is a Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Justice and Black Studies at The University of Illinois at Chicago.
Still catching up a bit. What a wonderful episode. I didn’t know I’d learn so much Minneapolis history! And it is always a treasure to hear Andrea Ritchie stories. ❤️
Alisa is also a black feminist philosopher and an assistant professor in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA.
Listen to the full episode:
She has co-founded and co-led several local and national grassroots organizations, including Survived & Punished, which advocates for the freedom of criminalized survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
She is a co-editor of the two-volume collection, Abolition Feminisms (Haymarket Books, 2022), and a special issue of Social Justice entitled, "Community Accountability: Emerging Movements to Transform Violence" (2012).
🐚 Stories for Power Episode 011
🎙️Meet our guest Alisa Bierria:
Alisa has been an advocate and organizer within the feminist anti-violence movement for over 25 years.
And that number is likely higher. ICE and CBP lack the records and have such flawed systems/procedures (or, one could argue that it isn’t flawed but actually operating as intended) that they don’t even know where to track or find people they’ve abducted, let alone how many they’ve deported in error.
📢 Ep 011: Abolition Feminisms
In our final episode, Beth Richie & Alisa Bierria reflect on their shared grounding in faith as necessary to remain steady along the ever-changing pathway to liberation. They remind us the importance of intentional community building, friendships, family, & joy.
he’s a co-founder of Incite! and a founder of Creative Interventions, one of the partner organizations of this relaunch of the StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP) / Stories For Power. She has lived in many of the cities featured in this podcast series.
🐚EP 010
🎙️This episode we welcome back our producer and this episode’s guest, Mimi Kim:
Mimi is a second generation Korean American, a daughter of immigrants from a country still divided. S
Each and every day, Kalei honors her mother, grandmother, and Aunty Malia Craver for their embodiment of aloha.
Listen to the full episode!
Kalei is a Teaching Professor at the University of Washington, and Associate Dean of the Office for Graduate Student Success in The Graduate School and Associate Dean for Excellence and Leadership in Social Work at the School of Social Work.
Her current interests are focused on alternative justice interventions aimed at healing instead of punishment; restoration instead of abandonment.
For over 50 years, her practice and research have been dedicated to analyzing the impact of colonization, racism, and masculinity on gender violence in Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, LGBTQ, māhū, and communities of color.
🐚 Ep 010: Radical Roots
🎙️Meet our guest Kalei Kanuha:
Valli Kalei Kanuha, born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi in the 1950s is the daughter of a Kanaka ʻŌiwi father and Nisei mother. Dr. Kanuha considers herself an Indigenous, critical feminist, activist-practitioner-scholar.
A Case for Abolition and Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, and co-founded @interruptcrim.bsky.social and the In Our Names Network, and led INCITE!'s work on law enforcement violence.
Tune into EP 010: Radical Roots
Andrea is the author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color and Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies, and co-author of No More Police.
She has been actively engaged in anti-violence, labor, and LGBTQ organizing, and in movements against state violence and for racial, reproductive, economic, environmental, and gender justice in the U.S., Canada, and internationally since the 1980s.
Meet our EP010 guest
@dreanyc123.bsky.social:
Andrea (she/her) is a Black lesbian immigrant survivor who has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating &agitating around policing & criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, & gender nonconforming people for the past three decades.
Tune in to this episode to hear from our co-founder @dreanyc123.bsky.social, alongside Valli Kalei Kanuha and Mimi Kim, as they weave a long view of the abolitionist feminist movement, one that crosses generations and geographic expanses, and multiple, intersecting movements.
📢Let’s talk Radical Roots, Tune into Ep 010
What a privilege it is that we get to hear from some of the OG’s of this work! This week, host Deana Lewis talks with Valli Kalei Kanuha, Mimi Kim, and Andrea Ritchie, whose entry into the feminist of color movement spans the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s.
She is the co-author of Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators with @prisonculture.bsky.social, and the author of Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction.
As a fellow at @interruptcrim.bsky.social, Shira runs The Help Desk which supports individuals and groups working to interrupt crises and violence without using the police.
🐚 EP 009: Chicago
🎙️Welcome back our producer and this episode’s guest, Shira Hassan:
Shira Hassan has trained and spoken nationally on the sex trade, harm reduction, self-injury, healing justice and transformative justice.
