advocacy
“It means a lot to show people who we really are.”
Beauty Behind Bars exhibits artwork by incarcerated people from the Washington, D.C., area in community spaces. Here, the project’s leaders discuss the power of art in advocacy work.
TOPICS
Culture & Politics
HOW OUR CULTURE AND OUR POLITICS FUEL MASS INCARCERATION
134 posts in ‘Culture & Politics’
A closer look
The Epstein Sleight of Hand
Calling Jeffrey Epstein a child abuser comfortably demonizes him while overlooking how our culture normalizes straight men’s everyday coercion and abuse of women and girls.
Politics
The Democrats Will Not Save Us
As long TSA lines have snarled airports, Democrats have touted their resistance to some aspects of immigration policing. But in reality our brutal immigration regime is a bipartisan creation.
advocacy
Building Narrative Power
By giving formerly incarcerated people the resources to tell their stories through film, Represent Justice is showing how storytelling has a central role to play in decarceral work.
advocacy
The Oscars in Solitary Confinement
‘The Alabama Solution’ was nominated for an Academy Award. Meanwhile, its incarcerated filmmakers are in lockdown because there’s no legal protections for imprisoned whistleblowers.
A closer look
The Myth of Pro-Family America
Trump’s allies incite moral panic about shrinking white families, even as the state dismantles families of color—a paradox rooted in slavery and eugenics.
culture
The Prison Spectacle
How reality TV turns incarceration into entertainment—and helps strengthen the very systems of violence it claims to expose.
A closer look
Making an Example of Luigi Mangione
The criminal legal system aims to send a message by massively overcharging him: it will defend racial capitalism above all else.
A closer look
Leaning In to State Violence
In ‘Enemy Feminisms,’ philosopher Sophie Lewis engages with the feminism of racists, colonizers, fascists, cops, and jailers to better understand what a truly liberatory politics needs to look like.
poetry
An Essay in Acrostic: P.O.L.I.C.E.
“They tell us we have the right to take up / space. But they come in armor and shields / that say otherwise.”
advocacy
The Police Don’t Protect Us
A decade of increasingly sexphobic lawmaking has left sex workers worse off, unable to keep themselves safe and more likely to be victims of police violence.
poetry
Hard Time in Prison
I had one / wish it will be I wish I can / get out of this cuz this is / a suffering pain time I’m doing
poetry
Two poems
“Shower Call Down Below” & “29 L-Building”
poetry
Hi Rise
I’m eligible to smoke til I fall clapping my / Hands and feet all the same time / Laffing at all this shit.
poetry
Poetry from Mississippi State Penitentiary
Work from poets incarcerated in Parchman’s Unit 29
poetry
Three poems
“Crying Johnny,” “Officer Judy Gives Instructions to the Lock Down Inmates,” & “Holiday Special Meal”
culture
Punishment TV
We are fighting to end carceral reality TV—including shows such as ‘60 Days In’—because no one should profit from punishment.
democracy & power
Abolition and the Presidency
The Trump administration will assail our movement. That doesn’t change the fact that it looks backward while we look forward.
Politics
This Is How You Win the Culture Wars
Faced with violence and authoritarianism, survival demands prioritizing relationship building over reactivity, and solidarity over silence.
A closer look
Almost Anti–Death Penalty
Biden’s incomplete slate of commutations saved lives but ultimately lost the moral argument.
Essay
A Lethal Upbringing
A decade of victimization landed a Harlem kid in prison. More than three decades later, he has not allowed prison to define his life story.
activism
A Radical Genealogy
A recent anthology offers an accessible political education in the long history of seeking to abolish U.S. prisons.
recommendations
The Year in Books 2024
A curated list of 2024 publications that moved us to continue working toward a world without mass incarceration.
activism
Back to the Basics
At a time of political realignment, progressive movements need to get back to building relationships, across differences, and growing their base.
Politics
The Terrain of Struggle
Leaving no one behind, abolitionists plan for a transformed future—even as we attempt to address pain points in the here and now.
culture
The Prison They Let You See
The San Quentin Film Festival offered a feel-good image of prison life—one far removed from the reality faced by most incarcerated Californians.
in conversation
Decarceral Judges
Most judges in Los Angeles are former prosecutors. But a leadership academy there is helping a pair of public defenders to challenge that status quo.
culture
Survival Art
“Art is not a leisure activity. Art is a redemptive, powerful, meditative, actionable force within a person—within a human being.”
Photo Essay
Resisting Creatively
In Pittsburgh, a collective of incarcerated and non-incarcerated artists is dreaming of a world without mass incarceration.
racial capitalism
Mass Criminalization as Religion
The deification of whiteness and property has long legitimized the containment of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized peoples.