Over the course of two years (2014–15), Columbia Prison Divest (CPD) successfully ran a campaign for Columbia’s divestment from two private prison corporations: G4S and Corrections Corporation of America (later rebranded as CoreCivic). While doing so, they retained a strong abolitionist message and focus: they emphasized that the problem was not just private prisons, but all carceral institutions.
They engaged in a successful inside/outside organizing strategy by conducting consistent, broad, effective, and radical political education initiatives; organizing bold direct action to pressure the obstructionist administration; and navigating the institutional disengagement and repression embedded within the University—always with the end goal of divestment and the core value of abolition.
What You Can Find on This Page
- A timeline to orient yourself to the major moments in the campaign
- Oral histories (audio and transcripts) to gain an in-depth, contextual understanding of the inner workings of the movement
- Key strategies and tactics, their definitions, and their use within CPD
Read the timeline below to orient yourself to the major moments in the campaign, and explore the oral histories below to gain an in-depth, contextual understanding of the movement.
Further Study
- Divestment Victory at Columbia University | @theLFShow: A short documentary about the CPD movement reflecting on bureaucratic repression and connecting CPD with the anti-expansion Manhattanville protests.
- Columbia IRAAS Symposium: Key CPD organizers (
Imani Brown,
Oladunni Oduyenmi, and
Ella Every-Wortman
) spoke with former student activists from Columbia’s anti-apartheid movement on the 30th anniversary of the 1985 “Free South Africa” blockade of Hamilton Hall.
Timeline
Discovery
Students requesting university investment records for an undergraduate thesis discover Columbia has $10 million invested in the private prison industry.
Campaign Launch
Columbia Prison Divest launches out of Students Against Mass Incarceration (SAMI) by reading a divestment letter to President Bollinger’s office.
Week of Engagement
“People, Prisons & Profit” brings together movie screenings and campus conversations.
Political Context
The killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown spark nationwide protests for Black lives, shaping the broader context of abolitionist organizing.
Die-In Protest
Students organize a die-in during Columbia’s annual tree-lighting ceremony. The University responds with NYPD riot police and barricades.
Recommendation for Divestment
ACSRI votes unanimously to recommend private prison divestment to the Board of Trustees.
Sit-In Action
CPD stages a day-long sit-in outside the President’s office demanding divestment be placed on the Board agenda.
Victory
After a year and a half of organizing, Columbia officially announces divestment from private prisons.
Oral histories
Asha Ransby-Sporn
This oral history contains information on Asha’s beginnings in Black youth-led anti-incarceration and anti-carceral movements in Chicago; the scale and scope of CPD’s student engagement and political education tactics; community-led organizing work connecting policing and carcerality with gentrification and displacement; CPD’s die-in at the annual campus tree-lighting ceremony; CPD’s theory of change, strategic goals, and tactical decision-making; and why CPD’s campaign was easier to win than other anti-institutional fights.
Ella Every-Wortman
This oral history contains information on CPD’s approach to the inner-institutional ASCRI process; CPD’s internal structure and recruitment process, including criteria for core organizers; risk evaluation for direct actions; the role of white organizers in the campaign; the campaign’s strategic pressure on the University President; and subsequent attempts to launch other divestment campaigns at Columbia and other universities.
Dunni Oduyemi
This oral history contains information on Dunni’s position as a student journalist and role handling the campaign’s messaging, communications, and media relations; the beginnings of the CPD campaign out of Students Against Mass Incarceration (SAMI); maintaining the radical, abolitionist core politics of the campaign while crafting messaging persuasive to institutional actors; CPD’s relationship with concurrent divestment campaigns on campus; direct action strategies; the threat of and response to NYPD repression; leveraging the University’s PR interests while resisting liberal cooperation; and reflections on the utility of the campaign’s win.
Founder/Principal: Kelsey Kitzke BC’23
Project Advisor: Sandra Moyano-Ariza
Project Assistants: Ramya Arumilli BC’25, Sophia Bartley BC’26, Eve Thompson-Brown BC’28
Contact: bc.cu.student.organizing.