Lessons from the Garden: Some Dad Shit feat. Dylan Rodriguez
Release Date: 10/22/2024
For a Livable Future: Building Movements to Stop War & Save the Planet
Beyond Prisons
Welcome to episode three of “Over the Wall: The Abolitionist Hour with Critical Resistance.” For listeners new to Beyond Prisons or our collaboration with Critical Resistance, this is a new, regular series that premiered in September of 2023. Hosted by members of Critical Resistance’s The Abolitionist Editorial Collective, “Over the Wall” discusses articles and key interventions made by Critical Resistance’s cross-wall, bilingual newspaper, The Abolitionist. This special episode focuses on both issues of the newspaper that Critical Resistance (CR) published in 2024:...
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Lessons from the Garden: We Don't Have to Learn Through Suffering feat. Anya Tanyavutti
Beyond Prisons
For this episode Kim sat down with long-time educator and organizer, Anya Tanyavutti for a conversation about her contribution titled “Shelter and Shower Toward Abolition: A Reflection on Collective Care, Reproductive Justice, and Educational Justice.” Anya Tanyavutti has 25 years of experience working in the fields of education and nonprofit leadership. She earned her Bachelor's in Elementary Education and Masters in Socio-Cultural Studies and Educational Thought, from Western Michigan University. Anya is a trained birthworker and a 3 time alum of the Jade T. Perry...
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The Kansas City Defender feat. Ryan Sorrell
Beyond Prisons
Kim sits down with Ryan Sorrell, founder of the Kansas City Defender, for a conversation about what motivated him to start a media organization, his early days as a content creator covering community and cultural events with his childhood friend and collaborator, and the influences of the radical Black press had on shaping his thinking and approach to journalism as a tool for liberation. Ryan is an organizer, media worker and artist. In 2021, he founded The Kansas City Defender, a Black-led abolitionist news platform and power-building organization rooted in the tradition of the radical...
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Lessons from the Garden: Some Dad Shit feat. Dylan Rodriguez
Beyond Prisons
Dylan Rodriguez joins Kim for a conversation about respecting his children’s autonomous voice, why he named his Fantasy Football team “Uncle Dylan Never Lies,” and what that has to do with abolitionist parenting. Dylan shares why he believes that caregivers and parents must take children's questions of ‘why?’ seriously, and how it is possible to treat why as a radical question that is fundamental to any aspirational abolitionist parenting praxis. They close by talking about the ways that the state deploys technologies of warfare against incarcerated people and their families, and the...
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Free the Mississippi Five feat. Garrett Felber
Beyond Prisons
Garrett Felber joins Kim for a conversation about . The #MS5 are five women in Mississippi sentenced to life with the possibility of parole in the 1980s and 1990s. They have been incarcerated over 175 years and denied parole 47 times. Lisa Crevitt, Anita Krecic, Loretta Pierre, Linda Ross, and Evelyn Smith, collectively known as the Mississippi Five, are now between 59 and 82 years old. Despite their achievements, personal growth, the loss of loved ones outside, and even recantations of key witnesses, they continue to be denied parole irrespective of their actions. It is time to #FreetheFive!...
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Lessons From The Garden: Happiness Is Not A Good Goal feat. Sarah Tyson
Beyond Prisons
Sarah Tyson joins Kim for a spirited conversation about her suspicions about happiness and the intellectual underpinnings that inform why happiness is not a worthy goal in general, but specifically for her children. Sarah and Kim talk about how the work of Sarah Ahmed helps us to understand why the archetype of the killjoy is an important abolitionist parenting framework, and why we can’t separate the material conditions under which we are forced to exist from our parenting practice. This is the second installment of our new series, Lessons From The Garden, where Kim will be...
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Lessons From The Garden: Practicing Vulnerability feat. Susana Victoria Parras & Alejandro Villalpando
Beyond Prisons
Susana Victoria Parras & Alejandro Villalpando join Kim to discuss how, through a continued practice of communal study, they are able to renew their commitment to each other, their child, and to their community in ways that are generative and don’t engage in disposability politics or pathologizing their elders and ancestors. This wonderful episode is the first installment of our new series, Lessons From The Garden, where Kim will be interviewing contributors to the forthcoming anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar titled . You can pre-order this volume now from Haymarket or...
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Introducing: Lessons From The Garden
Beyond Prisons
Beyond Prisons is excited to announce the launch of a special new series titled ‘Lessons from the Garden,’ where Kim Wilson will be interviewing contributors to the forthcoming anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar, . We Grow The World Together will be out on November 19, 2024 from Haymarket Books, and is wherever you buy books. The series is an opportunity to engage in further conversation with brilliant organizers, writers, and thinkers about their work, and how they practice abolitionist parenting and caregiving in their daily lives. Additionally, we will draw on...
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Making Movement Media feat. Chuck Modiano
Beyond Prisons
Kim is joined by long-time independent journalist Chuck Modiano for a conversation about movement media making, the importance of media literacy, and the intersection of sports and politics. Kim and Chuck begin by talking about what motivated him to start covering protests. He opens up about how he was impacted by the killing of Trayvon Martin, and how that tragedy reignited athlete activism in the United States. Chuck also offers us a historical perspective on the significance of sports activism dating back to the 1920s and through to today. They discuss how corporate media...
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Snuffing Out Revolution: Control Units & Resistance
Beyond Prisons
Welcome to episode two of “Over the Wall: The Abolitionist Hour with Critical Resistance.” For listeners new to Beyond Prisons or our collaboration with Critical Resistance, this is a new, regular series that premiered in September of 2023. Hosted by members of ’s The Abolitionist Editorial Collective, discusses articles and key interventions made by Critical Resistance’s cross-wall, bilingual newspaper, . This episode—dedicated to Critical Resistance co-founder and long-standing member Masai Ehehosi—focuses on and is titled, "Snuffing Out Revolution: Control Units...
info_outlineDylan Rodriguez joins Kim for a conversation about respecting his children’s autonomous voice, why he named his Fantasy Football team “Uncle Dylan Never Lies,” and what that has to do with abolitionist parenting. Dylan shares why he believes that caregivers and parents must take children's questions of ‘why?’ seriously, and how it is possible to treat why as a radical question that is fundamental to any aspirational abolitionist parenting praxis. They close by talking about the ways that the state deploys technologies of warfare against incarcerated people and their families, and the heightened state of emergency that people in prison experience and how this gets translated into the ways that we engage with and are in relationship with incarcerated people.
This is the third installment of our new series, Lessons From The Garden, where Kim will be interviewing contributors to the forthcoming anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar titled We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. You can pre-order this volume now from Haymarket or wherever you buy books.
The name of the series, Lessons From The Garden, is an apt phrase that reflects the metaphor in the book’s title, and allows us to consider many issues related to caregiving, parenting, and abolition. As Lydia Pelot-Hobbs once said “our citation politics matter,” and in that spirit we want to credit Susie Parras for the series title. Lessons From The Garden is an opportunity to engage in further conversation with the many brilliant organizers, writers, and thinkers about their work, and how they practice abolitionist parenting and caregiving in their daily lives. Additionally, we will draw on some of the themes that they wrote about in the book in order to help us deepen our understanding of caregiving - broadly configured - and what it means to live collectively in a world that is designed to keep us isolated from each other.
Dylan Rodríguez is a parent, teacher, scholar, organizer and collaborator who holds a job as a Distinguished Professor at the University of California-Riverside, where he has worked since 2001. He is a faculty member in the recently created Department of Black Study as well as the Department of Media and Cultural Studies. Since the late-1990s, Dylan has participated as a founding member of organizations like Critical Resistance, Abolition Collective, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, Cops Off Campus, Scholars for Social Justice, and the UCR Department of Black Study, among others. He is the author of three books, most recently White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide (Fordham University Press, 2021), which won the 2022 Frantz Fanon Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Dylan believes in the right—in fact, the obligation—of occupied, colonized, and incarcerated peoples to fight for their liberation against external oppressors as well as internal reactionaries, and the parallel responsibility of those who profess solidarity to take all necessary measures to protect, defend, and advance liberation struggle.
Episode Resources & Notes
Pre-order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson
IN STORES NOV. 19, 2024!
Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, “What if abolition is something that grows?” As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations.
In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice.
HELP SEND THIS BOOK INSIDE: Contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails by donating at https://haymarketbooks.app.neoncrm.com/forms/we-grow-the-world-together
Books by Dylan Rodriguez
White Reconstruction and the Logics of Genocide
Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition
Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime
Recommended playlist
Revolution - Nina Simone
Poem to Take Back the Night - June Jordan
Fuck these Fuckin Fascists - The Muslims
We Shall Not be Moved - Mavis Staples
A Day Will Come - Desiree Dawson, Mona Haydar
None of Us Are Free - Solomon Burke
Prison Poem - Nikki Giovanni
Seize the Time - Elaine Brown
Oh Freedom - Courtney Bryan
Love, The Time is Now - Bobby Womack
Credits
Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein
Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam
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