Join Chidi Adeyemi, Lydia Brown, Nomi Isaac, Vicky Osterweil, Matthew Perry, & Jennifer Love Williams to talk prison abolition & transformative justice.

The prison industrial complex harms us all. The United States uses mass incarceration, policing, judicial practices, and fines to control Black and Brown communities and to profit from their pain. In this panel, activists and organizers will explore abolitionist imaginations of a world without incarceration and state violence. Transformative justice seeks to solve the problem of violence at a grassroots level, without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. It allows us to build a world dependent on community, mutual aid, harm reduction, and transformative justice-informed violence intervention—not cops and cages—to deliver safety and justice. In this panel, we’ll explore the history of this radical movement, how panelists address and fight the devastating impacts of the carceral system on Queer and Trans people of color (QTPOC), and how we imagine a future where we keep us safe.

We Keep Us Safe: Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice is the third in a series of five virtual events* presented by Reclaim Pride Coalition and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in the weeks leading up to the Queer Liberation March, on Sunday, June 27th, 2021.

FREE event!

You can livestream this event on the Bureau’s or Reclaim Pride Coalition’s Facebook pages or YouTube channels. You’ve got options!

Watch on Reclaim Pride Coalition’s Facebook page

Watch on the Bureau’s Facebook page

Watch on RPC’s YouTube channel

Watch on the Bureau’s YouTube channel

Advance registration is not required to join this event.

In conjunction with these events, the Bureau’s online store now features a section devoted to titles recommended by Reclaim Pride Coalition members–click here to view recommended books on prison abolition and transformative justice.

Panelists’ biographies:

Chidi Adeyemi (they/them) is a Black nonbinary babe currently organizing with the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC), a collection of LGBTQIA2S+ folks organizing our third annual Queer Liberation March with no corporate sponsors and no NYPD control. They are also a volunteer operator with Trans Lifeline, a peer-support crisis hotline for trans callers that emphasizes harm-reduction and sharing resources, and does not allow nonconsensual active rescue. Chidi believes police place people at risk, especially callers who are poor, people of colour, sick and/or diabled; and that laying the groundwork for support without the risk of nonconsensual intervention saves lives. For three years, Chidi was a leader of Queer Union (an NYU activist organization), where they worked to support trans and GNC communties with campaigns for trans inclusive healthcare and classrooms, All Gender Clothing Swaps, and QTBIPOC Wellness events. In their free time, Chidi loves to care for their plants, drink endless cups of tea, and read the pick for their weekly book club, The Reading Rainbow Revolution.

Lydia X. Z. Brown (they/them/no pronouns) is an advocate, educator, and attorney addressing state and interpersonal violence targeting disabled people living at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. Lydia is Policy Counsel for Privacy & Data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, focused on algorithmic discrimination and disability, as well as Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External Affairs at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. They are founding director of the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, & Empowerment. Lydia is adjunct lecturer/core faculty in Georgetown University’s Disability Studies Program, and adjunct professorial lecturer in American Studies at American University’s Department of Critical Race, Gender, & Culture Studies. They serve as a commissioner on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, chairperson of the ABA Civil Rights & Social Justice Section’s Disability Rights Committee, board co-chair of the Disability Rights Bar Association, and representative for the Disability Justice Committee to the National Lawyers Guild’s National Executive Committee. Lydia is currently creating their own tarot deck, Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot. Often, their most important work has no title, job description, or funding, and probably never will.

Nomi Isaac (awaiting bio)

Vicky Osterweil (she/her) is a writer, editor and agitator based out of Philadelphia. Her book In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action was released in 2020 by Bold Type Books. She is the co-host of the podcast Cerise and Vicky Rank the Movies, where they are ranking all the movies ever made.

Matthew Perry (he/they) currently organizes with the Richmond Community Bail Fund (RCBF), a non-hierarchical volunteer-run nonprofit they helped to start in 2017 which posts bail for anyone who needs it in the Richmond, VA region, and broadly works to reduce the life-destructive harm caused by pretrial incarceration. RCBF engages with bail fund work through an abolitionist lens, which means posting bail for people regardless of their charge, and recognizing that ending cash bail alone isn’t enough because the anti-black, anti-poor, anti-trans violence it reflects will not end until systems of policing and incarceration themselves are overthrown.

Matthew understands abolition as the work of building a world where we rely on mutual aid, harm reduction, and transformative justice-informed violence intervention—not cops and cages—to deliver safety and justice, and thinks bail funds can be a great way to begin materializing this world. They are leaving RCBF at the end of this summer to pursue an MA in Experimental Humanities at NYU, and can’t wait to get re-involved with the vast (and growing) amount of abolitionist organizing happening in New York. When they’re not doing bail fund work, they love reading novels, playing soccer, and petting cats.

Jennifer Love Williams (she/her) is a formerly incarcerated black transwoman, an Entertainer and an Activist. She’s the Foundress the Jen Love Project and serves as Co-Chair of the formerly incarcerated subgroup of the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group. She also does work with The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. (Photo credit: Jose Ramon Photography)

*Watch recordings of the previous two panels on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:

No Place to Call Home: Queer and Trans Houselessness, 2021, took place on April 15, 2021.

Generations of Queer Activism took place on April 27, 2021.

The prison industrial complex harms us all. The United States uses mass incarceration, policing, judicial practices, and fines to control Black and Brown communities and to profit from their pain. In this panel, activists and organizers will explore abolitionist imaginations of a world without incarceration and state violence. Transformative justice seeks to solve the problem of violence at a grassroots level, without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. It allows us to build a world dependent on community, mutual aid, harm reduction, and transformative justice-informed violence intervention—not cops and cages—to deliver safety and justice. In this panel, we’ll explore the history of this radical movement, how panelists address and fight the devastating impacts of the carceral system on Queer and Trans people of color (QTPOC), and how we imagine a future where we keep us safe.

We Keep Us Safe: Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice is the third in a series of five virtual events* presented by Reclaim Pride Coalition and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in the weeks leading up to the Queer Liberation March, on Sunday, June 27th, 2021.

FREE event!

You can livestream this event on the Bureau’s or Reclaim Pride Coalition’s Facebook pages or YouTube channels. You’ve got options! We will post links here and on our social media pages in the days leading up to the event, and we’ll send the links to all who register on Eventbrite. Advance registration is not required to join this event.

In conjunction with these events, the Bureau’s online store now features a section devoted to titles recommended by Reclaim Pride Coalition members–click here to view.

Panelists’ biographies:

Chidi Adeyemi (they/them) is a Black nonbinary babe currently organizing with the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC), a collection of LGBTQIA2S+ folks organizing our third annual Queer Liberation March with no corporate sponsors and no NYPD control. They are also a volunteer operator with Trans Lifeline, a peer-support crisis hotline for trans callers that emphasizes harm-reduction and sharing resources, and does not allow nonconsensual active rescue. Chidi believes police place people at risk, especially callers who are poor, people of colour, sick and/or diabled; and that laying the groundwork for support without the risk of nonconsensual intervention saves lives. For three years, Chidi was a leader of Queer Union (an NYU activist organization), where they worked to support trans and GNC communties with campaigns for trans inclusive healthcare and classrooms, All Gender Clothing Swaps, and QTBIPOC Wellness events. In their free time, Chidi loves to care for their plants, drink endless cups of tea, and read the pick for their weekly book club, The Reading Rainbow Revolution.

Nomi Isaac (awaiting bio)

Vicky Osterweil (she/her) is a writer, editor, and agitator and a regular contributor to The New Inquiry. Her writing has also appeared in The Baffler, The Nation, The Rumpus, Real Life, and Al Jazeera America.

Matthew Perry (he/they) currently organizes with the Richmond Community Bail Fund (RCBF), a non-hierarchical volunteer-run nonprofit they helped to start in 2017 which posts bail for anyone who needs it in the Richmond, VA region, and broadly works to reduce the life-destructive harm caused by pretrial incarceration. RCBF engages with bail fund work through an abolitionist lens, which means posting bail for people regardless of their charge, and recognizing that ending cash bail alone isn’t enough because the anti-black, anti-poor, anti-trans violence it reflects will not end until systems of policing and incarceration themselves are overthrown.

Matthew understands abolition as the work of building a world where we rely on mutual aid, harm reduction, and transformative justice-informed violence intervention—not cops and cages—to deliver safety and justice, and thinks bail funds can be a great way to begin materializing this world. They are leaving RCBF at the end of this summer to pursue an MA in Experimental Humanities at NYU, and can’t wait to get re-involved with the vast (and growing) amount of abolitionist organizing happening in New York. When they’re not doing bail fund work, they love reading novels, playing soccer, and petting cats.

Jennifer Love Williams (she/her) is a formerly incarcerated black transwoman, an Entertainer and an Activist. She’s the Foundress the Jen Love Project and serves as Co-Chair of the formerly incarcerated subgroup of the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group. She also does work with The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. (Photo credit: Jose Ramon Photography)

*Watch recordings of the previous two panels on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:

No Place to Call Home: Queer and Trans Houselessness, 2021, took place on April 15, 2021.

Generations of Queer Activism took place on April 27, 2021.