Season 2, Episode 7 | Until We’re All Free

For our final episode, we’re joined by prison abolitionists Comrade BIM, from the Vaughn 17, and Fariha and Bee, organizers with DCIWOC, DC Incarcerated Workers Organizing Coalition. BIM is a member of the Vaughn 17, a group of 17 activists charged in the 2017 prison uprising inside the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. They share about abolitionist ethics of care, showing up as co-conspirators, rupture in community, and moving in accountability. Laquesha Sanders closes our series with her final segment on mental health and student debt, sharing how she freed herself from six-figure debt. Canadian-Ugandan poet and culture worker, Elizabeth Mudenyo, author of the poetry chapbook With Both Hands, shares her poem “Nothing Owed”. We offer you these questions: What are lessons prison abolitionists teach us in school abolition? How do we move beyond allyship and sit in co-conspiracy? What does it mean to center accountability as liberatory praxis? What do we own when we’re called in or out? Send your thoughts to us at [email protected] or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript (Finalized Friday, July 7, 2023)

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

Elizabeth Mudenyo’s website
Rebellious Hearts, Dwayne Staats
We Do This Til We Free Us, Mariame Kaba
We Will Not Cancel Us, adrienne maree brown 
Brick by Brick: How We Build a World Without Prisons, Cradle Community 

Learn more + be in solidarity with DCIWOC

Instagram: @dciwoc
Facebook: DC IWOC
Email: [email protected]
Patreon: patreon.com/dciwoc
Venmo: @dciwoc
Ca$hApp: $dmviwoc

MUSIC

“Hey You”, Qué Soul 

Yogic Beats: “Body and Soul;” “Meditate;” “Mangos” 

Dancing on Desks theme song composed and arranged by Mara Johson and Elliott Wilkes