Beyond Prisons

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 ke...

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 ...

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...

Kim sits down with Ryan Sorrell, founder of the Kansas City Defender, for a conversation about what motivated him to start a media organization, his early days as a content creator covering community and cultural events with his childhood friend and collaborator, and the influences of the radical Black press had on shaping his thinking and approach to journalism as a tool for liberation. 

Ryan is an organi...

Dylan Rodriguez joins Kim for a conversation about respecting his children’s autonomous voice, why he named his Fantasy Football team “Uncle Dylan Never Lies,” and what that has to do with abolitionist parenting. Dylan shares why he believes that caregivers and parents must take children's questions of ‘why?’ seriously, and how it is possible to treat why as a radical question that is fundamental to any aspirational ab...

Garrett Felber joins Kim for a conversation about the campaign to Free the Mississippi Five. The #MS5 are five women in Mississippi sentenced to life with the possibility of parole in the 1980s and 1990s. They have been incarcerated over 175 years and denied parole 47 times.

Lisa Crevitt, Anita Krecic, Loretta Pierre, Linda Ross, and Evelyn Smith, collectively known as the Mississippi Five, are now between...

Sarah Tyson joins Kim for a spirited conversation about her suspicions about happiness and the intellectual underpinnings that inform why happiness is not a worthy goal in general, but specifically for her children. Sarah and Kim talk about how the work of Sarah Ahmed helps us to understand why the archetype of the killjoy is an important abolitionist parenting framework, and why we can’t separate the material conditio...

Susana Victoria Parras & Alejandro Villalpando join Kim to discuss how, through a continued practice of communal study, they are able to renew their commitment to each other, their child, and to their community in ways that are generative and don’t engage in disposability politics or pathologizing their elders and ancestors.

This wonderful episode is the first installment of our new se...

Beyond Prisons is excited to announce the launch of a special new series titled ‘Lessons from the Garden,’ where Kim Wilson will be interviewing contributors to the forthcoming anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar, We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. 

We Grow The World Together will be out on November 19, 2024 from Haymarket Books, and is now available ...

Kim is joined by long-time independent journalist Chuck Modiano for a conversation about movement media making, the importance of media literacy, and the intersection of sports and politics. 

Kim and Chuck begin by talking about what motivated him to start covering protests. He opens up about how he was impacted by the killing of Trayvon Martin, and how that tragedy reignited athlete activism in the United...

Welcome to episode two 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,...

Josh Davidson and Leslie James Pickering from the Certain Days collective join the show to talk about 2024’s Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar and the work of their collective. We previously spoke with Josh and other folks from the collective back in 2020 and we encourage you to go listen to that episode if you haven’t heard it yet. 

Josh and Leslie spoke to us about the works included...

This is the first episode of  our new series titled “Over the Wall: The Abolitionist Hour with Critical Resistance.”

This will be a regular series on Beyond Prisons, hosted by members of Critical Resistance’s The Abolitionist Editorial Collective, in which they will discuss articles and key interventions made by Critical Resistance’s cross-wall, bilingual newspaper, The Abolitionist. T...

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains discussions of sexual violence.

Kim and Brian discuss Mark E. Kann’s “Penitence for the Privileged: Manhood, Race, and Penitentiaries in Early America.” This essay is a chapter in the book Prison Masculinities, edited by Don Sabo, Terry A. Kupers, and Willie London.

Our wide-ranging conversation examines the role of prisons in early America as a tool for ...

For this episode, Kim sat down with Jeanie Austin, a Bay Area librarian and academic who focuses on library services for incarcerated people, and Sarah ball, a New York City public librarian working inside jails and prisons providing access to books and information for criminalized and incarcerated people and their families.

We explore the multifaceted role of prison libraries, and the...

In this follow-up to our six-year anniversary episode, Kim shares some of what she has been going through in recent years. We recommend you listen to that previous episode before listening to this one.

You can support Kim on Cash App at https://cash.app/$BeyondPrisons

Credits

Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein

Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam

...

April marks 6 years of Beyond Prisons! Thank you so much to everyone who has listened to the show and supported us over the years.

In this episode, Kim and Brian reflect on their work and their lives over the past several years. They discuss everything from their favorite episodes to how they work together, how doing the podcast influenced their lives, and what has brought them joy outside of the show.

This is the third episode in our Creative Interventions series, where we explore this fantastic and practical toolkit for stopping interpersonal violence and speak with some of the people whose organizing efforts directly informed it.

We speak with Mimi Kim and Shira Hassan once again, this time with reflections, observations, and other notes for people who are considering intervention...

Brian Kaneda and Woods Ervin join the show to tell us about the Close California Prisons Campaign.

This campaign is led by the statewide coalition known as Californians United For A Responsible Budget (CURB), pressuring Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Correction to close prisons across the state. 

Las...