Join the Haymarket Book Club to take 50% off Everything!

Podcast

Challenging Governance Through Punishment and the Politics of Solidarity

For more than two decades, the movement to end mass incarceration has sought to challenge policing, criminalization and incarceration as harmful institutions. Amongst the harms perpetrated by these carceral systems is the punishment paradigm, a term that signifies the hegemonic power of punishment as it now exists in the U.S., embedded in culture, media, law, and policy. Despite a heightened consciousness around the negative impacts of punitive systems following the uprisings of 2020, the institutions of punishment have remained largely intact.

The Trump administration has significantly escalated the use of punishing institutions, like policing, detention, incarceration and deportation, to target migrants, dissidents, and all people at the margins. The federal government has also increased its use of punishment practices, like the threats to punish institutions for not complying with government demands, the outsourcing of punishment to everyday people, and the impunity offered for otherwise punishable offenses to those who side with the administration. This escalation has demonstrated the centrality of punishment to authoritarian regimes, and laid bare the devastating consequences for our communities.

Speakers:

Laura Whitehorn served 14+ years in federal prison for the “Resistance Conspiracy” case.” Released in 1999, she works in the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign (RAPPCampaign.com), and for the release of political prisoners. She edited the "The War Before" by late Black Panther political prisoner and organizer, Safiya Bukari (feministpress.org) and helped organized the 2014 Interference Archive exhibition "Self Determination Inside/Out" which showed how the struggles of incarcerated people affected and shaped social movements on the outside. With her partner, the writer Susie Day, she was part of the prison, labor, and academic delegation to Palestine in 2016.

Nadia Ben-Youssef (she/her) is the granddaughter of artists, refugees, and revolutionaries. A human rights lawyer by training, Nadia currently serves as the Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal and advocacy organization working with social movements and communities under threat to dismantle racism, cisheteropatriarchy, economic oppression and abusive state practices. She has expertise in international human rights fora and mechanisms, and extensive experience developing advocacy strategies to influence U.S. decision-makers. Her work often centers at the intersection of art and advocacy, and she curates exhibits and artistic programming that document key human rights concerns, celebrate social movements, and allow creatives the space to chart the future. Central to Nadia's lifework is a commitment to the liberation of Palestine, and she is a proud co-founder of the Adalah Justice Project. Nadia is a member of the NY State bar, and serves on the Boards of Adalah Justice Project, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, and Multitude Films.

Silky Shah is the executive director of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power to abolish immigration detention in the US. She is also the author of the recently published book, Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition (Haymarket, 2024). Originally from Texas, she began fighting the expansion of immigrant jails on the US-Mexico border in the aftermath of 9/11 and has worked as an organizer on issues related to immigration detention, the prison industrial complex, and racial and migrant justice for over two decades. Her writing on immigration policy and organizing has been published in Teen Vogue, The Nation, Truthout, Inquest, and The Forge.

Charlene Allen is a writer and activist who works with community organizations to heal trauma and foster justice. She has been a restorative and healing justice practitioner for over a decade and advocates for policy changes to expand the use of community-based restorative practices. As a writer, Charlene’s debut novel, Play the Game, (HarperCollins, 2023), explores and advances restorative and healing justice practices in real life situations

Cameron W. Rasmussen is a social worker, researcher, educator, and facilitator. He is an assistant professor at the Thompson School of Social Work & Public Health at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa where he researches issues of accountability, violence, and justice, and the intersections of abolition and social work. Cameron is a Co-Editor of Abolition and Social Work: Possibilities, Paradoxes and the Practice of Community Care and is a Collaborator with the Network to Advance Abolition in Social Work (NAASW).

Co-Sponsors: Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative, Center for Justice at Columbia University, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Haymarket Books.

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/CAyIxFkh7U4

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

More Episodes

Sep 28, 2022

Debating Eco-Socialist Futures

Join Drew Pendergrass, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Andrea Vetter, Matthew Huber, and Thea Riofrancos for a discussion on left climate strategy that assesses where we are and what we should be fighting for. What are the most useful frameworks to help the Left to organize our climate justice movements? What demands should we prioritize, and what strategies can we borrow from history and from other social movements? How can utopian thinking expand our horizons in what must be a massive fight for a more sustainable future? Centering class struggle, transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, anti-capitalist economic alternatives like degrowth and socialist planning: can all of these ideas (and more!) be woven into a clear message and a blueprint for change? Join a panel of environmental thinkers to discuss left climate strategy and to assess where we are and what could be possible. A conversation with Drew Pendergrass, co-author of Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics, Matthew Huber, author of Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet, Andrea Vetter, co-author of The Future Is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism, and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, author of Reconsidering Reparations and Elite Capture. Moderated by Thea Riofrancos. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Drew Pendergrass is a PhD student in Environmental Engineering at Harvard University. His current research uses satellite, aircraft and surface observations of the environment to correct supercomputer models of the atmosphere. His environmental writing has been published in Harper’s, the Guardian, Jacobin, and Current Affairs. He is co-author of Half-Earth Socialism. Matthew T. Huber is Professor of Geography in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is the author of Lifeblood and Climate Change as Class War. Andrea Vetter is a transformation researcher, activist and journalist, using degrowth, commons and critical eco-feminism as tools. She is co-author of The Future is Degrowth. Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College. She is the author of Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019), and currently writing Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism for W.W. Norton. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and The Guardian, among others. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He is the author of the book Reconsidering Reparations and Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). He has published in academic journals ranging from Public Affairs Quarterly, One Earth, Philosophical Papers, and the American Philosophical Association newsletter Philosophy and the Black Experience. Táíwò’s theoretical work draws liberally from the Black radical tradition, anti-colonial thought, German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemporary social science, and histories of activism and activist thinkers. His public philosophy, including articles exploring intersections of climate justice and colonialism, has been featured in The New Yorker, The Nation, Boston Review, Dissent, The Appeal, Slate, Al Jazeera, The New Republic, Aeon, and Foreign Policy. This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Verso Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/9MNwY_6X1ZI Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Listen now
Oct 20, 2022

Salvage Live: Toward Reproductive Freedom

Join Salvage and Haymarket Books for this episode of Salvage Live featuring Sophie Lewis, Anne Rumberger, and Rosie Warren. For the better part of a generation the Right—especially in the U.S., but, increasingly around the globe—has wielded attacks on reproductive rights as the main weapon in their war to turn back the clock on the hard-won gains of social movements. This campaign has recently borne fruit as legal access to abortion evaporated for millions overnight following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Whether this will prove to be a decisive victory for the revanchists, or a moment that will galvanize further resistance remains to be seen, but it has undeniably proven the inadequacy of the liberal strategy of relying on the courts and voting harder. In the latest issue of Salvage both Sophie Lewis and Anne Rumberger argue for a different approach, one that abandons the timidity of the mainstream reproductive justice movement, and that learns the hard lessons of what brought us to this juncture. They will be joined for this launch event by Rosie Warren to discuss what it will take to go beyond resistance, and what reproductive freedom would truly mean. Speakers: Sophie Lewis is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against the Family and Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation. She lives in Philadelphia and posts at patreon.com/reproutopia Anne Rumberger is an activist with New York City for Abortion Rights, and author of ‘The Making of the Evangelical Anti-Abortion Movement,’ in Salvage #12: A Ceaseless Storm. Rosie Warren is the editor-in-chief of Salvage and the co-author of The Tragedy of the Worker. She is a parent of the chapel of the National Union of Journalists at Verso Books, where she is also an editor. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by Salvage and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/IknkAeMU-4k Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Listen now
Oct 21, 2022

Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages

Join Ray Acheson and David Vine for a conversation about a shared abolitionist framework to address structures of state violence. This is a book launch event for Ray Acheson's "Abolishing State Violence A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages," available now from Haymarket Books. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1883-abolishing-state-violence Connecting movements for social justice with ideas for how activists can support and build on this analysis and strategy, Ray Acheson will share their thoughts on the many mutually supportive abolition movements, each enhanced by a shared understanding of the relationship between structures of violence and a shared framework for challenging them on the basis of their roots in patriarchy, racism, militarism, settler colonialism, and capitalism. Speakers: Ray Acheson is director of disarmament at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and a steering group member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its work to highlight the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons and work with governments to develop the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Acheson is the author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. David Vine is Professor of political anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. David is the author of a trilogy of books about war and peace including the recently released, The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State (University of California Press, 2020). David is also the author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World and Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military on Diego Garcia. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/hshsLAT9WzM Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Listen now
Oct 21, 2022

Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction

Join Shira Hassan, Mariame Kaba, adrienne maree brown, Erica Woodland, and The Native Youth Sexual Health Network for a conversation about liberatory harm reduction and Shira Hassan's new book, Saving Our Own Lives. In her new book, Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction, Shira Hassan tells the stories of how sex workers, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, queer folks, trans, gender non-conforming, and two-spirit people are – and have been - building systems of change and support outside the societal frameworks of oppression and exploitation. At a political moment when Liberatory Harm Reduction and mutual aid are more important than ever, this book serves as an inspiration and a catalyst for radical transformation of our world. Join us for the virtual book launch event for Saving Our Own Lives with Shira Hassan, Mariame Kaba, adreinne maree brown , Erica Woodland and Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN). More speakers to be announced soon! "Saving Our Own Lives is rooted in Shira Hassan’s extensive experience and commitment to harm reduction as a liberatory practice. This is a book grounded in deep love for those who are most marginalized in our society and respectfully documents their stories and emancipatory analyses. This open-hearted book is illuminating, informative and inspiring. It will have a forever place on my bookshelf." —Mariame Kaba Pre-order your copy of Saving Our Own Lives here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1938-saving-our-own-lives Speakers: Shira Hassan is the author of Saving Our Own Lives and a lifelong harm reductionist and prison abolitionist. Shira has been working on community accountability for nearly 25 years and has helped young people of color start their own organizing projects across the country. She has trained and spoken nationally on the sex trade, harm reduction, self injury, group work and healing & transformative justice. Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator and curator who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. She is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. She is the author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us and No More Police. adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public through her multi-genre writing, her music and her podcasts. adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas and practices for transformation. She is the author/editor of seven published texts and the founder of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, where she is now the writer-in-residence. The Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) is an organization by and for Indigenous youth that works across issues of sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice throughout the United States and Canada. Erica Woodland is a facilitator, psychotherapist, healing justice practitioner and the Founding Director of the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network, a healing justice organization that envisions a bold vision of care rooted in collective healing and liberation. He is co-editor and co-author of the forthcoming book Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care and Safety (North Atlantic Books, 2023). Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/RILgfgV1OtU Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Listen now
Oct 31, 2022

A World to Win: The Fight for a Socialist Future (Socialism 2022 Final Plenary)

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, David McNally, and Donna Murch speak at the final plenary of the Socialism 2022 conference. ***Listen to all of the sessions from the Socialism 2022 conference by subscribing to the Socialism Conference podcast feed, wherever you get your podcasts.*** Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/socialism-conference/id1648960830 Listen on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/socialismconf Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/38mBCw7Kwu0rkOKRARIfDk The struggle for socialism is happening on many fronts, but all of our struggles are linked by the larger project of dismantling capitalism and building a new socialist future where all of us are free. At the final plenary of Socialism 2022, speakers will provide some perspective on our current moment, tie together the major themes of the conference, and draw energy and inspiration for the fights ahead. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org. Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Listen now
Nov 2, 2022

Solidarity with Railroad Workers

Join a panel of rank-and-file railroad workers for a discussion of one of the most important struggles in recent labor history. Railroad workers are currently engaged in one of the most important struggles in recent labor history, in an industry that is at the heart of the functioning of society. The rail industry has seen massive deregulation, lean production, and persistent undermining of working conditions that have made the work all but intolerable. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Join the Community Solidarity Committee! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSem9qSAGziUtRK9bn0WAGSxpOJ_C1eKsenf60yKsJyNDWYFow/viewform?usp=sf_link Check out the Solidarity Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10sf8-y3CyBh5B9PEZeAw_MgyoMvVdNNNOJYzd4zIcNQ/edit?usp=sharing ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Despite enormous political pressure, railroad workers are fed up, evidenced by the sections of workers who are voting NO on a Tentative Agreement that they feel doesn't address the base safety and quality of life issues they are willing to strike over. Railroad Workers United (RWU), a cross-union democratic rank and file organization of railroad workers, has launched a Vote No Campaign, insisting that this Tentative Agreement offers very little given the conditions they face and the role they play in the economy. If the railroad workers lead a strike, it will have immediate implications - economically and politically - for every sector of US society. Most importantly for the labor movement, and for socialists and radicals within it. Come hear Railroad Workers United members speak about their struggle, the situation on the rails, and how you can get involved in efforts to support them. The success of this campaign is of urgent importance, and solidarity must be built. Featuring: Engineers and conductors from Railroad Workers United, facilitated by Maximillion Alvarez from The Real News who has covered this struggle extensively. Co-Sponsored by: Railroad Workers United, Haymarket Books, and Many more. View full list of co-sponsors here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ok2RkkD0TcNmNU8BGXbdeCPT7NRblpMckSbq1Djxq14/edit?usp=sharing. This event is sponsored by Railroad Workers United and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/7gU-Vj_-IqY Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Listen now