Project NIA Sunset Spotlight

Recorded 9.26.2012 at a "Juvenile-in-Justice" event at the Gage Gallery sponsored by the Mansfield Institute and Project NIA.

Young Men Share Their Confinement Experiences

Chiraq and Its Meanings

An excerpt from the "Arrested Justice Toolkit" workshop, facilitated by Ann Russo and Deana Lewis. This session engaged the key findings of Beth E. Richie’s book "Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation" to develop a plan of action for mobilizing transformative justice responses to interpersonal and state violence in Chicago.

Arrested Justice Toolkit Workshop Excerpt

In December 2023, Project NIA is sunsetting after 15 years of working toward ending youth incarceration. In this episode, hear from Chicago-based organizer, ethan ucker about what he learned from his time with PN, and the seeds he is sprouting with his new project Stick Talk.

ucker is the co-founder and co-director of Stick Talk, which builds the capacity to respond to urban gun violence without criminalizing firearm possession or defaulting to abstinence-based approaches to firearms. Stick Talk advances a Firearm Harm Reduction strategy to shift practices on the ground for responding to gun-related harms and discourse about the people they most directly affect. Their goal is to decrease the number of young Black and Brown people being arrested and incarcerated for gun possession offenses and to interrupt the demonization of their politics of survival.

More information about Stick Talk:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/urbanmarronage
Website: www.stick-talk.org

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - ethan ucker

Music and organizing have more in common than you think. We talked to one of the co-founders of Circles and Ciphers, Emmanuel Andre, a New York-raised public defender and restorative justice practitioner based in Chicago.

Circles & Cipher is a hip-hop-infused restorative justice organization led by and for young people affected by violence. Learn about the inception of the organization and how its work changed and expanded over time. Emmanuel also touches on the importance of "getting out of the way" of young people and how stepping back or sunsetting can create more opportunities for youth to lead as we center them in this work.

More information about Circles and Ciphers:
Website: https://circlesandciphers.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/circles_ciphers/

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Emmanuel Andre

Aislinn Pulley talks through her experience planning a "play-in" for Tamir Rice on the first anniversary of his killing by police, Project NIA and other groups invited children and youth ages 12 and above to play in honor of the precious life that was lost to state violence.

Aislinn Pulley is a Co-Executive Director at the Chicago Torture Justice Center, and a long-time organizer who has worked on a variety of campaigns including the Reparations Now movement to pass the historic 2015 Reparations Ordinance for survivors of CPD torture, campaigns for justice for families who have lost loved ones to police violence, defense campaigns to free political prisoners, and many others. Born and raised in Chicago, Aislinn founded the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter and was the youngest founding member of the cultural non-profit that used art for social change, Insight Arts in addition to organizing with We Charge Genocide.

Photos from #AYearWithoutTamir play-in:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sierraromeo/albums/72157661744587912/with/23378762041

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Aislinn Pulley

Look back with children's book illustrator Bianca Diaz on her 2022 Project NIA residency where she expanded on a short comic inspired by stories from formerly incarcerated mothers on the importance of honesty and emotional space for their children.

Bianca Diaz is an artist from Pilsen, Illinois who started organizing with Project NIA as a young adult. As our 2022 artist-in-residence, she revised and adapted a black-and-white comic that she made in 2014, titled “The Princess Who Went Quiet”, into a full-color children’s book. Bianca illustrated our founder Mariame Kaba's children's book See You Soon, published in March 2022.

More information on Bianca Diaz:

Website: https://www.biancadiaz.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biancadiazart

Purchase a copy of See You Soon: https://bookshop.org/p/books/see-you-soon-mariame-kaba/

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Bianca Diaz

Lewis Raven Wallace was Project NIA’s very first volunteer. Listen as he recounts the organization's early days and takeaways from our past projects.

Wallace is an independent journalist, a co-founder of PressOn, a Southern movement journalism collective, and the host of The View from Somewhere podcast. He previously worked in public radio and is a longtime activist engaged in prison abolition, racial justice, and queer and trans liberation.

More information on Lewis:

PressOn website: https://www.presson.media/
Lewis' Podcast: https://www.lewispants.com/

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Lewis Raven Wallace

"I am somebody who would describe themselves as sort of polyamorous in terms of movements." In this episode, we talk to scholar and organizer Erica Meiners about her interactions with Project NIA over the years. They ground the early years in the organization in where abolition was as a political movement 10-15 years ago, and talk through experiences with the Chicago PIC Teaching Collective

Erica Meiners is a Professor of Education and Women’s and Gender Studies at Northeastern Illinois University – a public, urban institution in Chicago. Meiners is the author of a number of books including: Abolition. Feminism. Now. with Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent and Beth Richie, and Right to be hostile: Schools, prisons and the making of public enemies. Meiners is a co-director of university curriculum for Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project.

More information on The PIC is... A collaboration between Project NIA and the Chicago PIC Teaching Collective:

The PIC is... Zine: https://issuu.com/projectnia/docs/the-pic-is-zine

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Erica Meiners

In this interview, fabric artist Rachel Wallis walks through her time as Project NIA's first artist-in-residence and how she uses art and quiltmaking as a tool to create dialog and understanding around abolition and movements for liberation. Wallis is a community-taught textile artist, her work spans the divide between fine art and craft.

More information about Wallis and her art practice:

Website: https://www.rachelawallis.com/

Anguilla Prison Massacre Quilt documentation site - https://www.anguillamassacre.com/

The Justice Arts Coalition interviews Rachel Wallis: https://thejusticeartscoalition.org/2022/12/07/teaching-artist-spotlight-rachel-wallis/

Stitch by Stitch: Conversations on Quilting, "Healing" and Abolition Exhibition Site: https://www.stitchingabolition.com/

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Rachel Wallis

Bettina Johnson is a Chicago organizer and the co-founder and current steering committee member of Liberation Library in Chicago, IL, an abolitionist books-to-incarcerated youth project that was incubated within Project NIA. Bettina is also a facilitator and member of other prison-industrial complex abolitionist campaigns like Defund CPD. Learn about her politicization, experiences with burnout, and learning how to find the capacity to organize again.

For more information on Liberation Library:
Website: http://www.liberationlib.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liberationlib/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/liberationlib/

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Bettina Johnson

Debbie Southorn joined us to discuss their early work on our Chain Reaction project as well as their current work around anti-militarism and campus organizing with Dissenter, and how we can support student organizers in the face of repression and doxxing.

Southorn is an organizer with the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago, where she supports youth-led efforts to divest from policing and end surveillance. They are a founding advisory board member of the anti-militarist youth organization, Dissenters.

More information about Dissenters:

Website: https://wearedissenters.org/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearedissenters/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/wearedissenters

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Debbie Southorn

Explore the touchstone projects that Eva Nagao worked on through her many years in and alongside Project NIA as well as the importance of experimentation in liberatory movements.

Eva Nagao is the creative director of our sister organization Interrupting Criminalization (IC), and coordinator of our One Million Experiment collaboration. Eva is an organizer based out of Los Angeles. Her work focuses on communications for grassroots organizations and resource development that supports community-based structures working to decrease reliance on policing and punishment. When she was in Chicago, IL, Eva organized with groups like Project NIA, the Chicago Freedom School, and Liberation Library, and currently is a member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP). In this episode, learn about the touchstone projects that Eva worked on through her many years working with and alongside Project NIA as well as the importance of experimentation in liberatory movements.

For more information on One Million Experiments:
Website: https://millionexperiments.com/
Substack: https://millionexperiments.substack.com/

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Eva Nagao

Connect with educator Page May as she talks through how her early organizing experiences with Project NIA pushed her in her politics and the power of communication and storytelling as a tool to talk to children about liberation.

Page May is a Black, queer woman currently living as an organizer, educator and abolitionist in Chicago. Growing up in rural Vermont, Page moved to Chicago several years ago and began doing work around agriculture and food. She helped form the Black and Pink Chicago chapter and organized with We Charge Genocide. Page was one of eight youth delegates who traveled to the United Nations and was the lead author of the shadow report submitted to the UN Committee Against Torture. ​Page is the co-founder of Assata's Daughters, an intergenerational organizing collective of radical Black women located in the city of Chicago.

Project NIA Sunset Spotlight - Page May

This is an audio submission by a high school student at Julian named Marquis Eason who is 15 years old. He contributed to Project NIA's "Chiraq & its Meaning(s)" project.

Chiraq by Picasso

This is an audio submission by the following students: Nicholaus Butler, Phillip Taylor, Henry Golden, Wilson Milner. It was recorded by their teach Daphne Whitington. 

How We Move

This is an audio submission to Project NIA's "Chiraq & its Meaning(s)" call for submissions. It is from Kuumba Lynx, an arts and activism group for youth in Chicago.

KL Strikeback Cipher - Chiraq Revisited

This is an audio submission by a student from Julian High School named Malik Thomas. It was submitted to the "Chiraq and Its Meaning(s) project. 

Don't Run Forest by Malik Thomas

This was submitted to Project NIA's "meaning(s) of Chiraq" project by students at Julian high school.

Pass That

Mariame K and Sam L on how Johnny Cash sang to (and not just about) prisoners. 

Johnny Cash, Prison Reformer, Part 1

Mariame and Sam trace Johnny Cash's political advocacy on behalf of prisoners and prison reform in part 2 of the podcast.

Johnny Cash, Prison Reformer, Part 2

Christopher shares what it was like to go be incarcerated at age 13. 

Recorded 9.26.2012 at a "Juvenile-in-Justice" event at the Gage Gallery sponsored by the Mansfield Institute and Project NIA.

Christopher on being locked up at 13

Julio describes what being locked up feels like.

Recorded 9.26.2012 at a "Juvenile-in-Justice" event at the Gage Gallery sponsored by the Mansfield Institute and Project NIA.

Julio on what being locked up is like

Nate describes how he got locked up, and what it was like.

Recorded 9.26.2012 at a "Juvenile-in-Justice" event at the Gage Gallery sponsored by the Mansfield Institute and Project NIA.


Nate on how he got locked up and what it was like

Lookman explains how fights in school got him put in jail, and what the experience of incarceration is like.

Recorded 9.26.2012 at a "Juvenile-in-Justice" event at the Gage Gallery sponsored by the Mansfield Institute and Project NIA.

Lookman on getting locked up for school fights

Patrice explains why he wouldn't wish incarceration on anybody.

Recorded 9.26.2012 at a "Juvenile-in-Justice" event at the Gage Gallery sponsored by the Mansfield Institute and Project NIA.

Patrice incarcerated at 21, wouldn't wish it on anybody

Launched in 2009, Project NIA is an advocacy, organizing, popular education, research, and capacity-building center with the long-term goal of ending youth incarceration. We believe that several simultaneous approaches are necessary in order to develop and sustain community-based alternatives to the system of policing and incarceration. Our mission is to dramatically reduce the reliance on arrest, detention, and incarceration for addressing youth crime and to instead promote the use of restorative and transformative practices, a concept that relies on community-based alternatives.

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