After the not-guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for killing 17-year old Trayvon Martin, some are asking what "justice" would look like for Trayvon. The conversation about whether the criminal legal system is the 'best' way to seek accountability for harm has been ongoing for several years. It continues in the wake of this trial. Some outstanding questions include:
1. What would transformative justice look like in this case?
2. How do prison abolitionists respond to the George Zimmerman trial?

The panelists below addressed these and other questions at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum on Thursday, August 15th 2013.

Dr. Erica R. Meiners is a Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Education at Northeastern Illinois University. She is the author of Right to be hostile: schools, prisons and the making of public enemies (2009) and articles exploring the school to prison pipeline. She is a member of her labor union, University Professionals of Illinois, and actively involved in a number of non-traditional and popular education projects including an anti-prison teaching collective (Chicago PIC Teaching Collective) and the Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE) and she is currently teaching classes at Stateville Prison and St. Leonard’s Adult High School. 

Dr. Beth Richie is the Director for the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Beth E. Richie is also Professor of African American Studies and Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Her scholarly and activist work focuses on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors, and emphasizes how race/ethnicity and social position affect women's experience of violence and incarceration. Dr. Richie is a qualitative researcher and the author of numerous articles concerning Black feminism and gender violence, race and criminal justice policy, and the social dynamics around issues of sexuality, families, and grassroots organizations in African American communities. Her most recent book, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation, chronicles the evolution of the contemporary anti-violence movement during a period of mass incarceration in the United States. She is a founding member of INCITE!: Women of Color Against Violence

Dr. Traci Schlesinger is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Sociology at DePaul University. Questions about how the criminalizing and punishing system maintains racial oppression in the contemporary United States inform her teaching, research, and activism. While Traci has engaged in activism around numerous issues, including police violence, prisoner support, the privatization of education, global capitalism, reproductive injustice, and war, the focus of her activism for the past 13 years has been prison abolition, broadly understood. Currently, Traci is a volunteer with the Transformative Justice Law Project’s name change mobilization, which helps trans* folks file for legal name changes and report those name changes, once they are finalized, to a number of government agencies including the DMV and Social Security. Having documents with correct names and gender markers helps keep people safe from police violence as well as other forms of violence. 

The panel is moderated by Mariame Kaba

Transformative Justice and the Trayvon Martin Case: A Consideration

Interview with Emmanuel Andre of Circles and Ciphers for Quentin VerCetty - PO Box Artist Talk on July 23, 2021

Circles and Ciphers - impact of MK on the work - July 2021

I wrote this song for the streets, to remind us of the world we're trying to build. I live in South Minneapolis, a short bike ride away from where George Floyd was murdered by the police in 2020. The "reforms" the city has been trying to make since Jamar Clark was murdered here by police in 2015 have had no impact. 

This November, Minneapolis will be voting on whether we should replace the current police department with a new department of public safety (which may include licensed peace officers as necessary). "Voting YES means we will have more options for community safety than the current 'police-only' model."—https://yes4minneapolis.org

There are other ways to keep us safe besides just policing. The cops don't do work that prevents shootings—they can only show up after the fact. Defunding the police doesn't mean we're getting rid of helping people; it means investing that money back into the community for housing, jobs, food, and education. When people's needs are provided for, violence is prevented. We can dream better dreams and have a city where all people, including the most vulnerable, are safe. 

>> Thanks to SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE for additional beatboxing and engineering (https://soundcloud.com/see-more-perspective)

Further notes and links below the lyrics.

Lyrics:
We keep us safe
I am my sister’s keeper
We keep us safe
In our community

We keep us safe
I am my brother’s keeper
We keep us safe
In our community

We don’t want your cops
Defund the police
Invest it in the kids (Invest it in the youth!)
No Justice No Streets!

We keep us safe
I am my sibling’s keeper
We keep us safe
In our community

We don’t want your cops
Defund the police
Invest it in more jobs
No Justice No Streets!

We keep us safe
We are the children’s keepers.
We keep us safe
In our community

We don’t want your cops
Defund the police
Invest it in more homes
No Justice No Streets!

We keep us safe
We are the elder’s keepers.
We keep us safe
In our community

We don’t want your cops
Abolish the police
Invest it in the schools
No Justice No Streets!

We keep us safe
We are the people’s keepers.
We keep us safe
In our community
In our community
In our community


Notes: "No Justice No Streets!" is the rallying cry of George Floyd Square. Activists have asked that the streets at 38th & Chicago not be opened until these 24 Demands are met. You can read the 24 Demands of Justice Resolution 001 here: https://linktr.ee/38thandchicagogfs 

If you need an introduction to abolition, there are many excellent resources. This one from the Mennonite Church USA is very solid. https://www.mennoniteusa.org/abolition-curriculum-intro/

Junauda Petrus's poem, "Give the Police Departments to the Grandmothers" continues to be an inspiration.
https://realblackgrandmothers.com/in-the-arts-could-we-please-give-the-police-departments-to-the-grandmothers/in-the-arts/

As the good folks at the Minneapolis Police Report Card say, "There was a time before policing, and there will be a time after."— www.mpd150.com

We Keep Us Safe

Grief moving through me
Let my body
Feel the waves of love and grief…

Grief, grief and love
Let me feel it all
Let me feel it all

Grief and Love

Beatrice and Jules speak with Mariame Kaba and Melissa Gira Grant about the importance of understanding the library as a site of political contestation and a rare expression of the commons in contemporary US life, and how left organizers are fighting back against right wing attacks on public space. 

Transcript: https://www.deathpanel.net/transcripts/library-mariame-kaba-melissa-gira-grant

Join up with For the People: A Leftist Library Project here:
https://www.librariesforthepeople.org/

And find the latest updates here: 
https://librariesforthepeople.substack.com/p/library-solidarity-with-palestine

Read Melissa’s piece, “Librarians Didn’t Sign Up to Be Queer Activists—but This Year, They Are” here:
https://newrepublic.com/article/175567/librarians-new-queer-front-lines

Referenced in this episode:

“The Prison in Twelve Landscapes,” directed by Brett Story (2016)
https://www.prisonlandscapes.com/

“The People and the Library: Reflections on Grass-Roots Efforts to Preserve and Expand the Library As a Commons” here: https://justseeds.org/the-people-and-the-library-reflections-on-grass-roots-efforts-to-preserve-and-expand-the-library-as-a-commons/

Find our book Health Communism here: www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-communism

Pre-order Jules' new book here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/733966/a-short-history-of-trans-misogyny-by-jules-gill-peterson/

Death Panel merch here (patrons get a discount code): www.deathpanel.net/merch

As always, support Death Panel at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod

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Death Panel 473 Taking Back the Library w/ Mariame Kaba & Melissa Gira Grant (11/09/23)

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Taking Back the Library w/ Mariame Kaba & Melissa Gira Grant (11/09/23)

Interviews gathered at the #SayHerName Rekia Boyd action on October 15th, 2015. Featuring words from Ethan Viets-VanLear, JeNae Taylor and Rekia's brother, Martinez Sutton.

We Do This For Rekia

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.

Transformative Justice and the Trayvon Martin Case: A Consideration

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