Rustbelt Abolition Radio #2: From Migrant Justice to Prison Abolition

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In this episode we focus on the joint struggle for migrant justice and prison abolition. We speak with Abraham Paulos, Executive Director of Families for Freedom: an abolitionist organization fighting deportations in New York City; and Aly Wayne, an undocumented organizer based in Syracuse, one of upstate New York’s rustbelt cities. Together, we examine the tensions between demanding citizenship and fighting for freedom, as well as the need to hold Blackness and criminality within the migrant justice movement.

We close today’s show with two firsthand narratives. One from Curtis, a local Detroiter whose family has been turned upside down by the carceral state and racial capitalism, and another from Harold Gonzales, currently incarcerated inside Michigan’s Kinross prison. Harold’s entire letter is available online, here.

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Rustbelt Abolition Radio is an abolitionist media and movement-building project based in Detroit, MI. Each episode amplifies the voices of those impacted by mass incarceration and explores ongoing work in the movement to abolish the carceral state (that is, prisons, police, courts as well as racial domination and capitalist exploitation).

The show seeks to strengthen community collaboration and undermine the common sense that putting people in cages and shackling them with electronic devices solves the problems produced by racial capitalism. As such, we aim to expand our ability to struggle against the ways in which the carceral state impacts our daily lives and to create a space where we can both imagine and remake our world anew.