This week on Kite Line we air a discussion from 2021, in which we speak with prison abolitionist journalists Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law. We share the first part of our discussion on their recent book, Prison by Any Other Name: Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms. The book is an in-depth look at the various “alternatives to prison” that are …

The U.S. was shaken this week by the death of Lashawn Thompson in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail.  He had been moved to the psychiatric ward after being jailed on a simple battery charge.  Physically healthy when he was arrested, he was left in a cell infested with bed bugs and other vermin.  Michael Harper, an attorney for Thompson’s family, said …

This week, we share the final part of a conversation about policing sex. Micol Seigel talks to Anne Gray Fischer about her book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification. Today, their focus turns to Boston and Atlanta, discussing Boston’s vice district, known as the Combat Zone, and how the police used this …

First, we have our monthly round up of prison disturbances, as compiled by Perilous Chronicle. Afterwards, Angela Davis shares a statement in support of the Stop Cop City movement. And we finish sharing a panel hosted by Haymarket Books on the abolitionist struggle to Stop Cop City.  In this section, we hear organizer Kwame Olufemi of Community Movement Builders and …

This week we continue sharing a panel hosted by Haymarket Books on the abolitionist struggle to stop Cop City.  In this section, we hear Hugh Farrell in conversation with Sarah Haley, a leading historian of Black feminism in the South, organizer Kwame Olufemi of Community Movement Builders, and journalist Micah Herskind. Haley roots contemporary resistance to Cop City within a longer …

This week, we continue sharing Haymarket Press’s panel, “the Abolitionist Struggle against Cop City.”  In this segment, Stuart Schrader and Micah Herskind fill in the past  40 years of historical context for why the Cop City project is being pushed through specifically in Atlanta.  Schrader teaches at Johns Hopkins University and wrote Badges without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.  …

During a dramatic week of action in the Atlanta forest this past week, hundreds of forest defenders sabotaged a construction site for the unpopular “Cop City” development.  Police responded with an act of extreme collective punishment against the entire movement, attacking a nearby Stop Cop City music festival, tasing, beating, and arresting concertgoers at random.  34 people were detained, with …

From March 4-11th, thousands of people will be converging in Atlanta’s  Weelaunee Forest, as part of the abolitionist and environmentalist struggle to stop “Cop City,” a police training facility set to be built over a vast urban forest. Reflecting this unprecedented mobilization, we are focusing on the history and current stakes of the struggle. For context, we start off with …

Earlier this week, Keith LaMar went on hunger strike at the Ohio State Penitentiary.  He has faced escalating harassment from administrators and guards as his execution this fall looms and as solidarity momentum builds on the outside.  This harassment extends to new arbitrary rules preventing him from wearing spiritually-significant jewelry and systematic interruptions during visits.  Keith is on death row …

This we continue our conversation between Micol Seigel and Anne Gray Fischer about her recent book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification, an account of gender and sexuality’s crucial role in the history and exercise of police power. [ Here are our previous episodes ] with Anne Gray Fischer on the book