In this issue:

People serving Death By Incarceration sentences in PA urge court to allow claims to be heard  

Death By Incarceration (also known as life without the possibility of parole) is a term coined by a movement of advocates working to end the practice, including many who are currently or formerly incarcerated. Under Pennsylvania law, people convicted under the “felony murder” rule are automatically sentenced to life imprisonment – even if they did not take a life, or did not intend to take a life in the course of the crime – and, by virtue of their life sentences, prohibited from eligibility for parole. A lawsuit we filed with the Abolitionist Law Center and Amistad Law Project says such mandatory sentences are unconstitutionally cruel under the Pennsylvania constitution. Last Monday, our team argued in court against the state’s attempt to dismiss the case. 

“I can honestly say we no longer think or act as we once did before having been sentenced to life without parole,” said plaintiff Tyreem Rivers, who has served 24 years of a Death By Incarceration sentence for a robbery committed when he was 18. 

Learn more about this case on our website.

Upcoming events! – “Agendas for Black Liberation” panel & “Nationtime – A Freedom Flicks Screening”  

We are thrilled to be hosting two events this week as part of our Black History Month 2021 programming. The first is “Agendas for Black Liberation: Past, Present, Future(s),” a virtual panel conversation with organizers and cultural workers.

The panel will elevate the powerful history of agendas for Black liberation within the U.S. and globally, through art, dialogue, and uplifting our movement partners. To honor Black history is to celebrate Black future(s). Join us for an evening reflecting on the impact of Black Liberation-oriented political agendas and policy platforms on the global Black Freedom Struggle throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. 

RSVP here to receive the link and password.

We are also excited to host a virtual screening of Nationtime as part of our Freedom Flicks series. 

Nationtime, the late William Greaves’s long-lost film, documents the 1972 National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana. At the convention, more than 10,000 Black people – including Fannie Lou Hamer, Bobby Seale, Harry Belafonte, Jesse Jackson, Amiri Baraka, Dr. Betty Shabazz, Coretta Scott King, and more – gathered in Gary, Indiana to establish a self-determined Black political agenda. 

Register to join the screening on our website.

To keep up with our full roster of upcoming events, head to the Events page on our website.

Black History Month Week 3 – Abolition & the global fight against anti-Blackness 

Latest in our Liberation Archive series, a part of our Black History Month 2021 programming, is a piece on the demands of the prison industrial complex abolition movement. Abolition as a framework provides the starting point for a vision of a revolutionary future, a vision that is liberatory. In the words of Audre Lorde, “when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.”

In the six years since Ferguson, calls for accountability for the state-sanctioned murder of Black people have evolved to encompass demands to defund and abolish the prison-industrial complex. To understand how we came to this moment, we must examine the history of prisons and policing and their central role in perpetuating the oppression of Black people. 

Continue reading the piece from week 3 of this series on our website.

In our weekly Creating Black Futures series, another piece of our weekly Black History Month 2021 programming, we are highlighting partners and organizations doing movement work today to create a better tomorrow. We invite you all to continue to educate yourselves around the issues confronting Black communities – in the United States and across the globe – and to support the leaders who are creating community-based solutions to these problems. 

This week, we focus on organizations that transcend borders – including pushing back against racist immigration and deportation policies – in building a global community free from anti-Black racism grounded or linked to colonial legacies, capitalism, and militarism.

To honor Black history is to celebrate Black futures. Learn more about these movements and how to support them on our website.

LISTEN: New episode of “The Activist Files”: The BREATHE Act – A love letter via policy  

What happens when a response to the demands that come from the street lead to radically reimagining public safety? Protest and policy merge, and “The BREATHE Act” is born.

In “The BREATHE Act: A love letter via policy,” the 35th episode of “The Activist Files,” Nadia Ben-Youssef, advocacy director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, talked with Ash-lee Woodard Henderson, co-executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center, about the current political moment for “The BREATHE Act” to take shape in relationship with the history and trajectory of the Black liberation freedom struggle.

Listen to this brand new episode of “The Activist Files” on our website.