The Global Prison Abolitionist Coalition invites you to a panel titled Global Prison Rebellions and Racial Capitalism on September 12, 1PM EDT. The link to a livestream will be published before the event here.
Speakers: Milena Ansari, Juliana Góes, Anthony J. Ratcliff
This panel marks the 50th anniversary of the Attica rebellion. The racism, abuse, and dehumanization of prisoners at Attica prison sparked a heroic uprising on September 9th, 1971. The rebellion, which resulted in a massacre, exposed state violence and white supremacy, and showed that prisoners’ struggles cannot be delinked from the long history of Black national liberation and international anti-imperialism. The panelists will examine the history of prison rebellions in the United States and the Global South namely, Palestine and Brazil. They will discuss prison rebellions as vital sites of resistance against state violence and racial capitalism. These rebellions, then and now, are interconnected, and should be understood as outposts of struggle against neoliberalism, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, Zionism, and carceral regimes.
Speakers:
Milena Ansari is an International advocacy officer at Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian human rights organization that works to support and advocate on behalf of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli and Palestinian prisoners by providing free legal aid to prisoners, advocating for them nationally and internationally, and working to end torture and other violations of prisoners’ rights through monitoring, legal procedures and solidarity campaigns.
Juliana Góes is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), holds a master’s degree in Political Science (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and a B.A. in Political Science (University of Brasília). She has published the articles “Success science and epistemology(ies): situated knowledge.” (Revista Estudos Feministas, 2019) and “Theoretical and analytical approaches on prostitution” (Caderno Espaço Feminino, 2018). Currently, Juliana Góes is working on a book manuscript called “Du Bois on Latin America and the Caribbean: Trans-American Pan-Africanism and Global Sociology” (co-author with Agustin Lao-Montes and Jorge Vasquez, under contract, SUNY Press). Additionally, she studies the connection between decolonial praxis, urban politics, and Black movements in Latin America, her dissertation’s theme. Juliana Góes also works with a wide range of social movements in the Americas. She has collaborated with sex workers organizations, Black urban settlements, and anti-prison movements.
Anthony J. Ratcliff is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. He earned a Ph.D. in African American Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2009. His dissertation analyzed the Pan-African politics of cultural struggle, with particular attention paid to the international dimensions of the Black Arts Movement. As a critical Hip Hop educator and radical historian, Anthony’s scholar-activist research and teaching interests include revolutionary Black arts and politics; Black anti-authoritarian and autonomous movements; Black feminist theory and praxis; decolonial activism and organizing; the impact of capitalism and mass incarceration on Hip Hop cultural production, and the abolition of policing and prisons.
