Stories for Power

Deana Lewis chats with Beth Richie and Alisa Bierria about the historical context and motivations behind their influential books that have been informed by and inform abolition feminism. Emphasizing practice as a lead to theory, both authors discuss the importance of their decades long on-the-ground work in the anti-violence movement, the struggle against anti-Black racism and the defense of criminalized survivors as a long arc towards freedom. They also reflect on their shared grounding in faith as necessary to remaining steady along the ever-changing pathway to liberation. 

List of references mentioned in this episode

Deana Lewis talks with Valli Kalei Kanuha, Mimi Kim and Andrea Ritchie, whose entry into the feminist of color movement spans the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s. Together, they weave a long view of the abolitionist feminist movement that crosses generations, geographic expanses from Hawaii to Minnesota to Toronto and movements including HIV AIDS, anti-imperialist/Third World feminism, anti-police violence, and trans and queer justice spaces. They discuss the importance of Critical Resistance and INCITE! which provided  collective homes for radical abolitionist feminist of color organizing, joining seemingly isolated and disconnected political trajectories into a powerful force that has evolved into to...

Deana Lewis talks with Mariame Kaba, Erica Meiners, and Shira Hassan - three abolitionist feminists who discuss the work they created and built in Chicago from the early 2000’s through the early 2010’s. They reflect on their path from witnessing the failures of the mainstream anti-violence movement especially for survivors, young people, formerly incarcerated people and sex workers – to experimenting and documenting their work in what became known as community accountability processes, transformative justice and abolitionist organizing. They talk about their relationships and how their solidarity and partnership fed their ability to experiment, find joy in the grief and ultima...

Our host, Deana Lewis, chats with Theryn Kigvamasudvashti, Kiyomi Fujikawa and Shannon Perez-Darby whose early community accountability work in Seattle rippled throughout the country. Their feminist abolitionist work inside and outside the evolving local domestic and sexual violence non-profit context in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s innovated so much of what we still use today. They discuss the critical work from Black-led, survivor-led, punk and queer and trans communities to create the many iconic projects such as Communities Against Rape and Assault (CARA) and API Chaya that were born during this critical era and that together dismantled the foun...

Join our host Deana Lewis as she interviews Esteban Kelly and Jenna Peters-Golden who were core collective members of Philly Stands Up that worked to restore trust and justice within the Philadelphia punk community starting in the early 2000’s. Philly Stands Up developed essential frameworks and practices for supporting accountability and change for people who cause harm while also supporting survivors in their rage and healing via Philly’s Pissed. They talk about how their close knit queer and trans community impacted the larger activist world and supported the long term work to end sexual violence throughout the city and...

Deana Lewis chats with Cara Page and Mia Mingus about their work in Atlanta during the early to mid 2000’s. They discuss the building of the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative whose critical work intersected with the beginnings of the frameworks of healing justice and disability justice and the burgeoning reproductive justice movement. Mia and Cara talk about the impact of racism, Islamophobia, ableism, anti-immigrant, homophobic and reproductive oppression and the fallout from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Their collective work contributed to what became some of the pillars of transformative justice work throughout the city of Atlanta, the South and be...

Join Deana Lewis as she speaks with our guests Rachel Herzing, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Mimi Kim about the essential organizing they were a part of to end violence without police, prisons and other carceral systems during the early to mid-2000’s in Oakland and San Francisco. They discuss the impact of the events of September 11, ongoing gentrification, and ableism on forming abolitionist politics and synergy with the work of Critical Resistance and Incite!. Their reflections on the emergence of community accountability and transformative justice work in that era discern the nuance between what we call the work of in...

Host Deana Lewis speaks with abolitionist feminists kai lumumba barrow, Paula X. Rojas, and Ejeris Dixon about organizing in New York City during the late 90’s and early to mid 2000’s. Their work to end police violence was spurred by police murders of Black and Brown people in New York City, sexual violence by police that targeted young people in Brooklyn, and anti-queer and transphobic violence throughout the city. Their projects ~ Sista II Sista, Critical Resistance NYC, Safe Outside the System, and the creation of Harm-Free Zones ~ built transformative justice and community accountability organizing at the local level to forg...

In this episode, our host Deana Lewis, speaks with three Black feminist abolitionist organizers from Durham’s SpiritHouse. Nia Wilson, Mya Hunter and Alexis Pauline Gumbs discuss the Black and Brown survivor led group they formed called Ubuntu as a response to the Duke lacrosse rape case that led to the creation of one of the first Harm-Free Zones in the country. Their work as artists, educators and cultural organizers prompted a culture of care and community and fierce organizing that changed the way we understand and practice abolition today.

List of references mentioned in...

In this episode, host Deana Lewis talks with micah hobbes frazier and Morgan Bassichis, two trans/nonbinary leaders of the transformative justice/prison abolition movement emerging out of radical organizing in queer/trans spaces in the early to mid-2000’s. micah, in his role at generationFIVE and in the harm reduction movement, and Morgan, formerly at Communities United Against Violence (CUAV), reflect on the centrality of queer/trans justice, racial and economic justice, and prison abolition as anchors to early transformative justice work. In stark contrast to the conservative LGBTQ movement’s embrace of marriage, military inclusion, hate crimes and...

Welcome to Stories for Power! Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative joined forces to re-launch the StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP) project to document and collect histories and stories about how we have been working to respond to violence without the use of prisons, police and other carceral systems. Deana Lewis, our podcast host and Just Practice Collaborative member, speaks with producers Mimi Kim, Rachel Caidor and Shira Hassan to introduce Stories for Power. These abolitionist feminists share how they envisioned and curated the podcast series to document the evolution of community accountability and transformative justice frameworks and...

What does transformative justice look like and where did it come from? Join us for a journey across local communities as we explore the last 25 years of building community accountability, transformative justice and abolitionist practice. Through the Stories for Power podcast, hosted by Deana Lewis, we trace the work of some of the architects and radical organizers of this current wave of work. 

This podcast is part of the relaunch of STOP – the StoryTelling & Organizing Project – presented by Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative. STOP collects and shares stories of everyday people, organizations and networks taking action to co...