In terms of last month’s updates:

In addition to facilitating a staff retreat for Dissenters, our essay “Practicing Abolition, Creating Community” was made into a zine by Project NIA, with accompanying illustrations by Emma Li. Based on comments we made on a panel last summer, the goal of the essay is both to make the concept of abolition more accessible, while also outlining concrete steps we can each take to move collectively toward a police- and prison-less future. You can download your free copy here, and please share far and wide!

We’re also ecstatic to share our recent interview with The Turn On podcast, discussing gender, ballroom scene history, and abolition, which can be accessed here. We had a genuinely wonderful time building with hosts Kenrya and Erica, and we hope you enjoy listening as much as we did recording!

We have our final facilitation with SJI’s Portal Project on the 21st, and are excited to wrap up and share out findings from the rich discussions in which the dedicated cohort of organizers has engaged over the past year. We especially want to offer our appreciation to our co-facilitator Noor Shawaf, who will be moving on to a new position at Seminary Co-op Bookstores! Her dedication made our work possible, and we want to publicly thank her, and wish her well on the next chapter of her journey!

We are honored to meet this month with young people from 826CHI’s Young Authors’ Book Project. Youth in this program wrote their own pieces in response to our 2019 poem “Layleen’s Bill (With Revisions)” and will be including them in a self-published book later this spring. We’ve agreed to write a short introduction for their publication, and can’t wait to read their brilliant words. More on that soon!

We have some major updates we’ll be sharing here next month, so keep posted!

BH