This week, we start in on the topic of Are Prisons Obsolete Over the next couple of Kite Line episodes, we will be sharing the words and writings of prisoners- many of whom have been featured on previous episodes- and their responses to Angela Davis’s book, “Are Prisons Obsolete”
For context, the Abolition Study Sessions are a new political education program out of Indianapolis, that invites all people interested in fighting against mass incarceration, the prison-industrial complex, and policing to join them in studying and discussing the theory and history of prison abolition and struggles against the carceral system. At the beginning of each month, the group make copies of the texts to be studied for that month available to people incarcerated in Indiana, and they leave hard copies to be picked up and read by people on the outside. On the final Sunday of each month, the Abolition Study Sessions host a public discussion of the text, which include commentary and questions provided by incarcerated comrades.
The text for the recent Abolition Study Session was ‘Are Prisons Obsolete?’, a foundational text about prisons, written by Angela Y. Davis.
The purpose of the Abolition Study Sessions is to collectively develop the analytical tools necessary to seriously confront and dismantle the carceral system, and to build stronger relationships with comrades who are incarcerated in Indiana and struggling against the system from the inside.
We share a conversation about the book between Faheem, who was featured in two recent Kite Line episodes, and Khalfani Malik Khaldun, who is a long term prisoner in the Indiana Department of Corrections. We follow that with a reading of an essay excerpt by Anastazia Schmid, who we have featured on previous episodes of Kite Line.