Interest Group Meeting
Monday, December 9th from 7:30pm to 9:00pm
Join the Prison Library Support Network for the last Abolitionist Futures meeting of 2024. We are beyond thrilled to be hosting the incredible Dean Spade as our guest. As part of this conversation, we’ll discuss Dean Spade’s Mutual Aid (a resource PLSN has used directly in its organizing work), and ways that groups like our own can work through difficult conversations, major organizing decisions, and structural change -- all while remaining accountable to our stakeholders (specifically -- the folks inside who rely on PLSN’s work!).
While this conversation is free to attend, we will be sharing our 2024 PLSN fundraiser -- ending at the end of December! Attendees are welcome to contribute a suggested donation of $20 after the discussion (all donations through 2024 are matched 5x!)
Materials to discuss:
- Mutual Aid (chapter 5) by Dean Spade. While we’ll be focusing part of our discussion on decision-making structure in organizing work, we highly recommend reading the whole book (available at BPL, QPL, NYPL).
- Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back! (documentary by Dean Spade).
- Recommended by Dean Spade:
- Voices from Within documentary (23 min, available to rent on Prime Video) - explore the film trailer here
- Explore resources about Calls from Home - a radio show featuring prisoner families’ voices broadcast into rural prisons. You can listen to a recording of a holiday broadcast here, or explore several resources at the bottom of this page.
About Our Host:
Dean Spade is an organizer, writer and teacher. He has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He is a professor at the Seattle University School of Law.
He is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law, and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next) (published by Verso Press in October 2020).
Dean’s new book, Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together, will be out in January 2024 and can be pre-ordered now with the discount code F<3CKED from Bluestockings Bookstore. More of Dean’s videos, words, and work can be found on his website.