Episode 11: Walidah Imarisha and Gabriel Teodros Talk Science Fiction as Social Justice Strategy

02/14/19 • 44 min

On the eleventh episode of The Activist Files, host Ian Head talks with writer and educator Walidah Imarisha and musician and teaching artist Gabriel Teodros about the relationship between fantastical writing and social justice work. As Walidah says, we are all doing science fiction when we imagine a different world. Science and visionary fiction, says Gabriel, is a useful tool for imagining a different future. When we do social justice work, we are so often reactive, so often fighting against something, it is easy to forget the importance of envisioning the world we want to see. Listen to this inspiring episode on how to imagine new futures, even while we fight against oppressive systems. Walidah is the co-editor of the collection 'Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements,' published in 2015, to which Gabriel is a contributor. She is also the author of ‘Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption,’ which won the Oregon Book Award in 2017. Gabriel has put out over ten albums, including his latest, ‘History Rhymes If It Doesn’t Repeat (A Southend Healing Ritual),’ and performed and taught in classrooms and stages around the world.

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Episode 10: Up close and personal with Guantanamo—with Center for Constitutional Rights lawyers Wells Dixon and Shayana Kadidal

It’s a question our legal team gets asked all the time: What is it like visiting Guantánamo? From the food options on the island to why it’s important to keep fighting against the continued indefinite detention seventeen years on, our Gitmo attorneys Wells Dixon and Shayana Kadidal give the Activist Files an inside look into the notorious prison.

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Episode 12: Transformative justice in an era of mass criminalization, Mariame Kaba and Victoria Law.

On the twelfth episode of The Activist Files, Senior Legal Worker Leah Todd talks with educator, organizer, and director of Project NIA Mariame Kaba and journalist, author, and organizer Victoria Law about their work on issues of violence, incarceration, gender, criminalization, and transformative justice. Mariame and Victoria share the personal experiences that brought them to their social justice work. They discuss the cycles of violence created by carceral solutions to social problems, and talk about the growing phenomenon of mass criminalization, including how the term allows us to think beyond just the impacts of incarceration and see ways that surveillance and punishment affect people's lives even outside of prison walls. In a comment that may remind Activist Files listeners of our last episode, Victoria and Mariame discuss the ways that prisons and carceral solutions have "stripped away our imagination," providing a one-size-fits-all response to harm that often causes more harm without providing resolution, safety, or healing. This episode highlights the importance of thinking in new ways about healing and providing accountability for harm, which is explored in Mariame's project transformharm.org. Episode 12 of The Activist Files is vital listening for anyone interested in how to go beyond punishing harm, to healing from, being accountable for, and preventing it.

Victoria Law - https://victorialaw.net
Tenacious zine (editor) http://resistancebehindbars.org/node/19
Books Through Bars NYC (co-founder) https://booksthroughbarsnyc.org
Resistance Behind Bars (author) http://resistancebehindbars.org - 2009 PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) award
Don't Leave Your Friends Behind (co-author) https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=502
Freelance journalist - major articles at https://victorialaw.net/writings/
Mariame Kaba - http://mariamekaba.com
Project NIA (founder and director) http://project-nia.org
Survived and Punished (co-founder) https://survivedandpunished.org
Transform Harm (creator) https://transformharm.org
Prison Culture blog (writer) http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/
Lifting as They Climbed (co-author) http://liftingastheyclimbed.zibbet.com/lifting-as-they-climbed-mapping-a-history-black-women-on-chicago-s-south-side
Missing Daddy (author) https://www.missingdaddy.net
Chicago Freedom School (co-founder) http://chicagofreedomschool.org
We Charge Genocide (co-founder) http://wechargegenocide.org
Chicago Community Bail Fund (co-founding advisory board member) https://chicagobond.org
Barnard Center for Research on Women (Researcher-in-Residence) http://bcrw.barnard.edu/fe