IN CINEMA
DISRUPTING FROM THE HEART: ABOLITIONIST COMMUNITY BUILDING
Screenings: Saturday, April 6 at 12PM
Tickets: FREE (suggested donation $7-15)
Co-presented with Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership and Working Films
Bard Microcollege invites you to join us for a community film screening and conversation about BEYOND WALLS, a collection of short documentaries that examine prison abolition from a wide range of perspectives with the hope of inspiring people to imagine and take action toward a world invested in community and not punitive practices.
Following the screening and discussion, there will be an ABOLITIONIST WORKSHOP with resources available on how to get involved and take action in the community, as well as a wellness circle for those who want to continue building towards a world without carceral systems.
Session I: BEYOND WALLS Screening + Discussion (12PM-2:15PM)
WHAT THESE WALLS WON’T HOLD
Adamu Chan and Christian Collins, 26 min.
WHAT THESE WALLS WON’T HOLD explores how relationships built on trust, shared liberatory struggle, and connections across broader abolitionist organizing work, can unfold into sites of resistance and radical change.
CALLS FROM HOME
Sylvia Ryerson, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Mimi Pickering, and Reuben Atlas, 31 min.
CALLS FROM HOME is an intimate portrait of rural prison expansion. The film documents WMMT-FM’s longstanding radio show that sends messages over the public airwaves to reach those incarcerated in Central Appalachia. For many, the show provides a lifeline to the world outside.
I’M FREE NOW YOU ARE FREE
Ash Goh Hua and Arielle Knight, 15 min.
A short documentary about the reunion and repair between Mike Africa Jr and his mother Debbie—a formerly incarcerated political prisoner of the MOVE9. In 1978, Debbie, then 8 months pregnant, and many other MOVE family members were arrested after an attack by the Philadelphia Police Department; born in a prison cell, Mike Africa Jr. spent just three days with his mother before guards wrenched him away, and they spent the next 40 years struggling for freedom and for each other.
DEFUND THE POLICE
Project Nia, 4 min.
People have a lot of ideas about policing. And our ideas about policing are shaped by our race, our genders, our class, and our parents. Dominant culture, especially mass media sells us the image of “Officer Friendly,” but whose experience is that actually based on?
PRACTICAL ABOLITION
Amistad Law Project, 2 min.
Sending people armed with guns to respond to mental health crises and public nuisance complaints is dangerous. It is often counterproductive and sometimes fatal. But what could take the place of policing? And in response to an epidemic of homicide, what are ways that we can keep our communities safer? In collaboration with artist Erik Ruin, Amistad Law Project staked out a creative path in lifting up alternatives to policing.
BEYOND WALLS was curated by Center for Political Education, Critical Resistance, MPD150, and Survived + Punished.
SCREENING RSVP:
Session II: Abolitionist Workshop & Healing Circle (3:15PM - 5:30PM)
The second session of our program invites community members to delve into abolitionist practices that disrupt the cycles of trauma and oppression that scaffold carceral systems.
Through a restorative justice workshop with Patrick Stephens, we invite participants to contemplate how redefining accountability can help us build new systems where interdependence and mutual trust create safety in our communities.
Our program concludes with a wellness and healing circle facilitated by Vivian Williams-Kurutz, a local yoga and meditation teacher. Vivian will be our guide through gentle movement and practices that attend to the constant distress that some of our nervous systems experience on a daily basis. The racial justice lens of this practice grounds collective wellbeing through personal practices of care that insist on our survival and thriving.
Saturday, April 6, 3:15 - 5:30 PM
Tickets: FREE (suggested donation $7-15)
Each session has limited capacity. Please RSVP separately for each session to reserve your spot.
WORKSHOP RSVP:
DISRUPTING FROM THE HEART: ABOLITIONIST COMMUNITY BUILDING is a joint effort between Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership, Working Films, and Maysles Documentary Center. While this event is free and open to the public, donations through our RSVP system will go to supporting local programming at Maysles Documentary Center.
To continue supporting the work of Bard Microcollege and Working Films, please visit us at Bard Prison Initiative and Working Films.
SPEAKERS & FACIITATORS:
Ray Figueroa Jr thanks the ANCESTORS, ORISHAS, and GOD for the privilege of serving as Co-founder and Coordinator of the BROOK PARK YOUTH FARM Community-based Alternatives-to-Incarceration initiative for formerly incarcerated youth. As President of the NEW YORK CITY COMMUNITY GARDEN COALITION, Ray is coordinating grassroots-driven advocacy for preserving The Land on which community gardens are located – unceded Land that was originally stewarded by the Lenape – that later was historically abandoned by the City and reclaimed by locally-impacted Black/Latinx residents as Cultural-Ecological Hubs of resilience and self-determination.
Darren Mack is an activist, advocate, and organizer. Darren is a Co-Director at Freedom Agenda which is a grassroots member-led organization. Freedom Agenda, along with over 180 organizational partners, is one of the organizations leading the Campaign to Close Rikers. Darren is also an alumnus of the Bard Prison Initiative.
Diego Sandoval-Hernandez is the Supervising Librarian for Jail and Prison Librarians at the Brooklyn Public Library. He holds a BA and a MLIS from McGill University. He is passionate about providing library services to communities outside of the physical spaces of the library.
Patrick Stephens is a Leadership Fellow at the Center for Community Alternatives, freelance writer for The Appeal magazine and a board member of Columbia Reentry. He is also an adjunct member of the New York City Bar Association’s Mass Incarceration Task Force and sits on its Corrections and Community Reentry Committee. As a systems impacted person, he is an avid restorative justice practitioner and advocate for trauma-informed care.
Vivian Williams-Kurutz is a vision-driven founder and executive director of Harlem Wellness Center, health activist, community organizer, speaker, yoga and meditation teacher, writer and business-owner based in Manhattan, NY. Through her two decades of work at the intersection of racial, health and environmental justice, and as co-owner with her husband of Plowshares Coffee, she is committed to contributing to the vibrancy, health and stability of her community and the world.
