News from the Interrupting Criminalization Initiative, plus fall events preview
Updates from the Social Justice Institute
This spring, Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action, an initiative organized by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie hosted a series of timely convenings aimed at shaping an agenda for interrupting, reducing, and ending criminalization, incarceration, and the deportation of women, girls, and trans and gender nonconforming people.
In March of 2019, key anti-criminalization leaders working at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality came together following the Beyond the Bars conference to synthesize effective organizing tactics and develop a comprehensive strategy to shape advocacy and philanthropic investment amidst the increasing recognition that women, girls, and trans and gender nonconforming people represent the fastest growing arrest, jail, and prison populations in the U.S.
In April, sexual assault advocates and organizers came together to address systemic sexual violence by law enforcement agents and develop survivor-centered policy and programmatic responses. Read Andrea J. Ritchie’s recent op-ed in the New York Daily News.
On April 11, Andrea J. Ritchie and Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, joined the BCRW community to discuss continuities of gendered state violence across the U.S.-Canada border, and explored possibilities for resistance across Turtle Island. Stay tuned for the video from the event.
On April 27, 350 organizers and community members crowded the Diana Center for the Building Accountable Communities National Gathering. Organized by Mariame Kaba, this convening included adrienne maree brown, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha, Ann Russo, Amita Swahdin, Shira Hassan, and other leading anti-violence organizers. Livestream videos of the first two plenaries are available on Facebook (here and here), and edited videos and interviews for organizers and educators will be forthcoming this fall.
In May, the initiative hosted Challenging Criminalization of Reproductive Autonomy, a two-day convening for advocates and organizers focusing on reproductive justice, the criminal punishment system, and immigration issues. Participants focused on building relationships, generating shared analysis, and developing collaborative strategies to address increasing restrictions on abortion access and growing criminalization in the current climate.
The initiative has also been busy with a number of publications and media appearances.
In April, Andrea J. Ritchie published Expanding Our Frame, Deepening our Demands for Safety and Healing for Black Survivors of Sexual Violence in partnership with the National Black Women’s Justice Initiative. Read an Essence article about the report here.
Also in April, Mariame Kaba appeared on Why Is This Happening? With Chris Hayes, an MSNBC podcast, to talk about prison abolition. Listen to the episode here.
Looking ahead, Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan will be released next week, on June 18. It is currently available for pre-order here.
Missing Daddy, a self-published children’s book by Mariame Kaba, about a girl who longs to be reunited with her incarcerated father will be republished in September by Haymarket Books. The book is currently available for pre-order here.
Image credit: Bianca Diaz
Check out Spring 2019 Videos
Scholar and Feminist Conference
Introduction and Welcome by Elizabeth Castelli
February 9, 2019
Scholar and Feminist Conference
“I Preferred the World of the Imagination to the Death of Sleep”: A Reading and Conversation
Featuring Chinelo Okparanta and Akwaeke Emezi, moderated by Yvette Christiansë
Friday, February 8, 2019
Scholar and Feminist Conference
“But words live in the spirit of her face and that/ sound will no longer yield to imperial erase”: Archiving Colonialism
Featuring La Vaughn Belle, Justin Leroy, and Cameron Rowland, moderated by Saidiya Hartman
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Scholar and Feminist Conference
“Every generation confronts the task of choosing its past”: Case Studies in Archiving for Activist Movements
Panel discussion featuring Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz and Maria Cotera, moderated by Elizabeth Castelli
Saturday, Februrary 9, 2019
Scholar and Feminist Conference
“Imagine a woman/ asking: How many workers/ for this freedom quilt”: Building an Archive of Domestic Worker Organizing, Now and Before
Panel discussion featuring Jennifer Guglielmo, Michelle Joffroy, Premilla Nadasen, Monique Tú Nguyen, Riya Ortiz, Diana Carolina Sierra Becerra, moderated by Miriam Neptune
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Scholar and Feminist Conference
Graveyards of Exclusion: Archives, Prisons, and the Bounds of Belonging
Keynote Lecture by Jarrett Drake
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Book Salon
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: A Salon in Honor of Saidiya Hartman
Featuring Saidiya Hartman, Daphne Brooks, Aimee Meredith Cox, Macarena Gomez-Barris, and Alexander G. Weheliye, moderated by Tina Campt
Monday, March 4, 2019
Elizabeth Castelli (BCRW Director and Professor of Religion at Barnard College), Christia Mercer (Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy at Columbia University), and Clémence Boulouque (Carl and Bernice Witten Assistant Professor of Religion at Columbia) have received a research grant from the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia for 2019-2020, to fund part of a multi-year project entitled, “Radical Thinking in Religious Contexts: Medieval Women on Self-Knowledge, Truth, and Nature.” The project is part of a broader collective effort to rewrite the history of philosophy and expand the canon–not merely adding women’s intellectual work to the mix, but expanding and transforming the frameworks for understanding the history of philosophical inquiry itself. Though primarily a historical project, “Radical Thinking in Religious Contexts” will also contribute to more contemporary discussions of the role that religious ideas, practices, and communities can create spaces in which epistemic and social justice can arise. BCRW serves as an institutional cosponsor for this project.
This summer, Pamela Phillips, Senior Program Assistant, will be a Fellow in the Barnard College Digital Humanities Center’s inaugural Summer Institute. Pam will be working with DHC staff to develop a digital platform for the Poverty and Housing Project, and Barnard College Professor Janet Jakobsen, BCRW Post-Baccalaureate Fellow Eve Marie Kausch (BC ’18), and Tirzah Anderson (BC ’21). The DHC Summer Institute was created to encourage and support independent research and digital project creation by students, staff, faculty.
This month, Eve Marie Kausch (BC ’18), Post-Baccalaureate Fellow, will participate in the 2019 Oral History Summer Institute at Columbia University, building skills to contribute to BCRW’s Poverty and Housing Project as well as a project commemorating BCRW’s upcoming 50th anniversary in 2021.
At the end of this month, we bid farewell to our beloved Che Gossett, Community Archivist and Student Coordinator. This fall, Che will begin a new chapter as a 2019-2020 Critical Studies Fellow in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of Art. We will miss Che dearly and wish them the best!
Check out our Fall 2019 events!
Featuring Cherríe Moraga, Simon Balto, Emily Thuma, Mariame Kaba, CeCe McDonald, La Vaughn Belle, Daniela Agostinho, Helle Stenum, Gina Rippon, Amanda Andere, Marc Dones, Vivian Vazquez, Meredith Talusan, Raquel Willis, and Lewis Wallace.
View the calendar of Fall 2019 events here.
Shout-Out to Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria
Thank you to Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria for our first year of collaboration!
Word Up is a multilingual, general-interest, volunteer-run community bookshop and arts space in Washington Heights, New York City. Word Up is a program of the 501(c)3 nonprofit organization Seven Stories Institute. Learn more.
Image credit: Air duct mural by Dominican artist and Word Up collective member Reynaldo Garcia Pantaleon. http://www.tb-credit.ru/our-company.html http://www.tb-credit.ru/dengi-v-dolg.html