Rustbelt Abolition Radio
Channel Details
Rustbelt Abolition Radio
Rustbelt Abolition Radio (RAR) is an abolitionist movement-building media project. Full episode transcripts are available on our website.
Recent Episodes
51 episodes
Survival Pending Abolition
Longtime abolitionists, thinkers, writers, activists, militants: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Kim Wilson, and Amanda Alexander discuss revolutionary survival...
“I’m fighting for my life right now”
This past weekend we spoke again with our friend-comrade Bruce X at Macomb correctional facility in Michigan. Bruce X has been warning us of this trag...
Updates about the dire situation inside Macomb prison in Michigan
As of today (3/27/2020), there are 24 confirmed cases of Cov-19 inside Michigan prisons. Two weeks ago, we spoke with Bruce “X” Parker about the situa...
Why are so many Michigan prisoners on quarantine?
Prisoners in several Michigan prisons are currently on quarantine — being subjected to the absolute and arbitrary sovereign will of the MDOC with litt...
Crimmigration and Internationalist Abolition
In this episode the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, an internationalist abolitionist organization, speaks about their fight against criminalization....
Prisons on Hunger Strike in Argentina
Thousands of prisoners in Argentina are on hunger strike. We speak with militant intellectual Liliana Cabrera about her experience inside Argentinean...
Abolitionist Study with Steve Wilson
Black and queer abolitionist writer Stevie Wilson, held captive by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, was recently released from solitary con...
A strategy of disruption: Thinking through the prison strike as an abolitionist tactic
Three years after the nationwide September 2016 prison strikes, abolitionist intellectual "HH" re-joins us on the show. "HH" speaks about what the few...
Ohio Prisoners Speak! A Year After the 2018 Nationwide Prison Strike
In this special bonus episode, released on the anniversary of the 2018 nationwide prison strike, we speak with two Ohio prisoners-- David Easley and M...
Democracia y Dictadura: el estado carcelario Chileno y resistencias abolicionistas
Hablamos con Patricio Azócar Donoso sobre los aparatos carcelarios que se despliegan dentro de los territorios que hoy se conocen como Chile -- desde...
Prison Labor and Industrial Penology
Charlie Bright speaks about the re-articulations of carceral narratives: from the era of Fordism through discourses on modernization and the desperate...
The Death Penalty, Sovereignty, and Abolition
Lisa Guenther, currently a professor of philosophy at Queen’s University in so-called Ontario, Canada, deconstructs the state’s right to kill or let l...
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments Feat. Saidiyah Hartman
Saidiya Hartman speaks about her latest book, Wayward Lives: Beautiful Experiments Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, and the beauty, autonomy, an...
Pill or Punishment: Involuntary Medication at a Michigan's Women's Prison
On January 2019, more than two thousand women confined at Michigan’s only women’s prison were put in quarantine. The quarantine comes in the wake of a...
Abolish Risk Assessment
"Predictive" instruments are common currency within the carceral reform movement. In this episode we speak with three abolitionists --Rodrigo Ochigame...
Letters from inside: The 2018 Prison Strike
In the thick of the 2018 prison strike, we published a notice in the San Francisco Bay View -- the extraordinary monthly Black newspaper which circula...
Ni Una Menos en las Cárceles
Nos encontramos frente a la difícil tarea de entablar un diálogo más allá del rustbelt, más allá del “cinturón oxidado,” más allá de esos territorios...
Riots, Crisis, and Prisons
In this episode, we speak with Joshua Clover, author of Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings and professor of literature and critical theory a...
Anti-Fascism and Carceral State feat. Lorenzo Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin
In this special bonus episode, we present a conversation between True Leap Press and Lorenzo Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin, recorded in Chicago earlier...
Political Organizing Behind the Walls
In this episode, we speak with Michigan-based writer and activist Dennis Boatwright. Dennis was held captive by the state for 24 years of his life and...
Reports from the 2018 Prison Strike
As reports of the 2018 prison strike actions and state retaliation continue to come in, we speak with Amani Sawari, organizer and media contact with J...
Prelude to the 2018 Prisoner Strike
Preparing for the upcoming 2018 Prisoner Strike -- slated to take place between August 21st and September 9th -- we speak with members of the Incarcer...
Native Resistance and the Carceral State
Nick Estes identifies the anti-Indian origins of the carceral state within the U.S. settler colonial project and argues that indigenous liberation off...
Abolishing Electronic Incarceration
In this episode, “Abolishing Electronic Incarceration”, co-producer a Maria speaks with Myaisha Hayes and James Kilgore about the movement to challeng...
Specters of Attica: Reflections from Inside a Michigan Prison Strike
On the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, hundreds imprisoned inside Michigan’s Kinross Correctional Facility refused to report to work o...
Border as Method
In this episode we speak with Sandro Mezzadra, who has written extensively about borders and migration, such as in a book he co-authored with Brett Ne...
On Carceral Capitalism
This episode features Jackie Wang and her recently released collection of essays titled “Carceral Capitalism.” She provides a framework to understand...
Out but not free: Surviving after Women’s Prison
This episode features Karmyn, a writer and artist who was discharged from Michigan’s Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility after being locked up...
Dispatches from Zapatista Territory
In this episode, “Dispatches from Zapatista Territory,” we speak with two of our fellow co-producers about their recent trip to autonomous Zapatista c...
Carceral Ableism and Disability Justice
In this episode: Carceral Ableism and Disability Justice, we explore the ways in which the framework of “carceral ableism” redraws our map of racial c...
Settler-colonialism and the Struggle for Abolition
This episode grapples with the relation between incarceration and settler colonialism. Kelly Lytle Hernández, abolitionist writer and professor of His...
State Repression and Movement Defense
This episode turns to questions of political repression, movement defense, and solidarity with political prisoners - questions which have been accentu...
Bonus: Education, Fascism, and Abolition: A conversation with George Ciccariello Maher
In this bonus episode, we speak with Dr. George Ciccariello-Maher, Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University. Placed on...
Beyond Policing
In this episode we take a critical look at the liberal discourse of police reform, which has increasingly gained prominence amidst the ever-recurring...
Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Fred Williams)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan...
Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Harold Gonzales)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan...
Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Ahjamu Baruti)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan...
Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Jake Klemp)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan...
Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside (w/ Baba X Guy)
'Michigan's Kinross Prison Strike: Reflections from Inside' is an exclusive archive of audio interviews with people currently incarcerated in Michigan...
Reports from the Prisoner Resistance Movement
In Reports from the Prisoner Resistance Movement, released on the anniversary of the 1971 Attica prison rebellion, we reflect on the intensifying poli...