For The Wild - RICHIE RESEDA on Dismantling Patriarchy ⧸134

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00:00:16.680 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.

00:00:20.520 our vulnerability is not what makes us weak it's what makes us strong that living with rather than

00:00:31.700 living on top of or seeking to dominate is what makes us strong it's just like how we relate to

00:00:37.060 the earth for the last few hundred years people have related to the earth as this is something

00:00:41.020 to dominate and exploit for my own gain and we are literally destroying the planet

00:00:46.700 Today, we are speaking with Richie Reseda.

00:00:51.560 Freed from prison in July 2018, Richie Reseda is a feminist ally, community organizer, recording

00:00:59.160 artist, and founder of the social impact record label, Question Culture.

00:01:04.300 Success Stories, the anti-patriarchy organization he started while incarcerated, was chronicled

00:01:09.600 in the CNN documentary, The Feminist on Cell Block Y.

00:01:13.180 He changes Californian prison policy with Initiate Justice, an organization he co-founded in prison.

00:01:21.700 So Richie, thank you so much for joining us on For the Wild podcast today.

00:01:26.420 I feel really honored and moved by speaking about the prison industrial complex with you.

00:01:32.700 It's a topic we've wanted to have on the show for a long time.

00:01:36.480 So this feels really important and fulfilling to be able to talk to you today.

00:01:41.400 Thank you. Thank you so, so much for having me.

00:01:43.840 So you co-founded your program, Success Stories, alongside Charles Berry back in 2014.

00:01:51.320 And I'm hoping that we can begin this interview with you sharing a little bit about success stories and the ways in which you're trying to redefine manhood.

00:01:59.700 You know, how is success stories dismantling patriarchy by engaging in meaningful conversations with at-risk communities, specifically men who are currently incarcerated?

00:02:10.700 And the story really starts in 2013, which is the year when we both transferred to Soledad, which is a medium security prison in California.

00:02:19.660 We both came from different high security prisons.

00:02:22.900 And what was different about the medium security prison is that it had a lot of self-help programs that were supposed to be rehabilitative.

00:02:30.860 and what I had noticed as somebody who my mentors my best friends really my chosen family my

00:02:39.900 community my wife were all powerful intersectional feminist women of color was that the conversations

00:02:46.740 that were being had about self-transformation were not challenging patriarchy in fact they're 0.95

00:02:52.720 enforcing it they were just simply saying don't break the law so I knew that we had to have a

00:02:58.760 deeper conversation, one that challenged patriarchy directly because patriarchy is ultimately what

00:03:03.980 leads men to harm ourselves and others. This idea that domination is power and my value is based on

00:03:10.820 how I can dominate others physically, sexually, monetarily. So we first, I drew up a patriarchy

00:03:22.080 workshop that was based on We Were Cool, a book by Bell Hooks, a feminist author and theorist

00:03:27.680 bell hooks and I tried to deliver it in the existing self-help groups that saw that and

00:03:32.640 they laughed me out of the room so I told Charles we got to start our own group and

00:03:36.380 we started the research and the curriculum building in October of 2013 and we launched

00:03:41.260 February of 2014 and we really understood that in order for men or anyone for that matter to

00:03:49.820 challenge patriarchy you're really asking them to literally go against the entire world so there

00:03:55.840 has to be something in it for them on the other side. They're not going to do it because we asked

00:03:59.320 them to do it or because it's the quote unquote right thing to do. They're going to do it because

00:04:02.920 there's some kind of benefit. So success stories is really based on the idea that our personal

00:04:08.180 success and our community success is only possible through challenging patriarchy.

00:04:14.940 There's a lot of dialogue around what will take the place of patriarchy, especially in the

00:04:21.160 perpetuation of the misconception that dismantling patriarchy is dismantling masculinity. But the

00:04:27.980 work of Bell Hooks, which Success Stories heavily draws upon, which you mentioned, counters this

00:04:33.100 misunderstanding. Hooks writes, quote, our work of love should be to reclaim masculinity and not to

00:04:40.240 allow it to be held hostage to patriarchal domination. There is a creative, life-sustaining,

00:04:46.060 life-enhancing place for the masculine in a non-denominator culture. And those of us committed

00:04:52.380 to ending patriarchy can touch the hearts of real men where they live, not by demanding that they

00:04:58.400 give up manhood or maleness, but by asking that they allow its meaning to be transformed, that

00:05:04.720 they become disloyal to patriarchal masculinity in order to find a place for the masculine that

00:05:09.960 does not make it synonymous with domination or the will to do violence, end quote.

00:05:16.420 So I'm wondering, what do you envision taking place of this masculinity held hostage to

00:05:23.900 patriarchal domination?

00:05:25.980 So something that we discovered in success stories is that we're not going to trade the

00:05:31.600 catch-all of patriarchy for a new catch-all, for a new definition of manhood or masculinity

00:05:37.520 that applies to everybody. By dismantling patriarchy, we allow people who identify as

00:05:42.500 masculine to be themselves and for their masculinity to be the individualized expression

00:05:48.640 of themselves in their masculine self. Yeah. It's interesting because masculinity and

00:05:57.600 maleness and manhood, these are important initiations that our culture has kind of just

00:06:02.580 completely buried. You know, young men or young women, they're not initiated into this next 0.61

00:06:11.840 chapter. And so I think it's interesting to hear you talk about how you really want the individuals

00:06:16.500 to find how they want to represent their own masculinity. I think that's what I'm hearing

00:06:22.200 from you. What I'm saying is be your true human self. What is most important to you and who is

00:06:30.860 most important to you and live in a way that best serves those goals and those people. If you

00:06:37.120 identify as masculine, your masculinity will be based in that. But I'm actually personally not

00:06:43.220 very interested in defining masculinity at all. I don't think it brings our society any value.

00:06:51.460 I'm more interested in developing identities that are based in responsibility and love to the people

00:07:00.120 and the goals that are most important to those individuals,

00:07:04.540 your masculinity, femininity, that's like swag. 0.86

00:07:08.060 That's like style.

00:07:09.160 It's just a way of what pronouns you want,

00:07:11.420 how you want to dress.

00:07:12.620 And that's like personal, individual swag.

00:07:15.640 And it's important, but I don't have a definition for it.

00:07:19.960 I think what we're doing by dismantling patriarchy

00:07:23.260 is exactly what Bell Hook said.

00:07:25.840 Once your masculinity is no longer being held hostage

00:07:29.340 by patriarchy, you get to define it for yourself. Thank you for clarifying that. That's really,

00:07:35.920 that's beautiful. So in preparation for this conversation, my mind has been so attentive

00:07:43.640 to patriarchy and the prison industrial complex and punishment as justice. And I'm led to think

00:07:50.900 about how violence is viewed as male birthright in this society. Statistics show that something

00:07:57.840 like 98% of mass murders are committed by men. 90% of murders are committed by men. 80% of those

00:08:05.940 arrested for violent acts are men. And then additionally, up to 80% of women convicted of

00:08:11.340 murder were acting in defense of their abusers. So on the topic of America's mass violence problem,

00:08:19.520 I'd like to ask you how you're foraging meaningful and transformative conversations

00:08:24.420 about violence beyond limited narratives of, for example, gun violence. How have you been able to

00:08:30.860 be in conversation with men around the normalization of carnage in this country?

00:08:36.600 The first thing that's really important is we need to understand that harm is more important

00:08:44.840 than crime. So the culture of this country is always talking about crime and punishment. We

00:08:51.600 have almost this um eerie creepy religion that's like obsessed with the law and um these notions

00:08:59.420 of like honor that are tied up within the law and as we know laws are just made by people something

00:09:04.060 can be legal today and illegal tomorrow there are things that happen that are legal that are

00:09:10.020 extremely harmful and there are things that happen that are illegal that are not harmful at all

00:09:14.900 So I feel like step one and how do how do we have conversations with men around violence that aren't limited is we need to get rid of the carceral prison industrial complex way of thinking about violence and talk about all violence, not just that which is illegal or that which has been criminalized.

00:09:36.880 So an example of that is this. You know, we have these conversations in prison, recognizing that people who are in prison are living under a constant condition of violence, that the simple act of being in prison, you are being held at gunpoint hundreds of miles away from your loved ones and forced to be there.

00:09:55.980 That is a violent act. That is an arrest is a kidnapping with metal restraints called handcuffs.

00:10:03.760 That is a violent act. And we point that out not so that people can be justified in their victimhood, but so that there is an understanding that we're not here to further criminalize you or to further put you down or to shame you.

00:10:17.120 We need to understand that we, as incarcerated people, or back when I was an incarcerated person, are living under a constant system of violence.

00:10:25.600 And we perpetuate a constant system of violence when we believe in this idea that violence is power and that domination is power.

00:10:32.160 And the same way that we feel being held at gunpoint hundreds of miles away from our families, the same way that we feel when we are facing violence and we are facing harm, that's how others feel.

00:10:41.320 when we were enacting the types of violence we enact in our communities, which may look like

00:10:46.380 something really obvious, like gun violence or something really obvious, like the robberies

00:10:50.080 that I committed. But it also can look like street harassment. It can also look like leering at

00:10:54.920 somebody. Neither of those acts are illegal, right? It can also look like requiring that

00:11:00.440 your female partner cooks for you. These are all acts of violence that are not necessarily illegal,

00:11:06.800 but cause people to feel just as violated as we do when we receive violence from the state.

00:11:12.420 And I think that creates a bridge of empathy to people. And it's easier to work through that

00:11:17.420 bridge of empathy than it is to work through a bridge of shame. That's powerful. Empathy is

00:11:23.580 powerful. The fact that we're in this culture that teaches us violence is powerful is so backwards.

00:11:30.140 and I really, really appreciate your analysis.

00:11:34.320 I would be remiss to not discuss

00:11:36.700 California's vast and destructive prison system,

00:11:40.420 specifically focusing on the school-to-prison pipeline

00:11:43.460 and the tremendous privatization

00:11:45.460 of all facets of prison life.

00:11:48.720 So perhaps beginning with the latter as preface,

00:11:52.480 could you speak to the ways in which for-profit prisons

00:11:56.500 are trying to monopolize life inside

00:11:59.000 as well as after prison. I'm specifically thinking of prison healthcare, privatization of

00:12:04.480 halfway houses, and then the drug treatment centers. So as you mentioned, California

00:12:10.680 is one of the biggest incarcerators in the world. We have the highest per capita incarceration rate

00:12:17.440 in a country that is the biggest incarcerator of the world. And if I could add one more layer to

00:12:23.520 that, Los Angeles, where I'm from, Los Angeles County is the biggest incarcerating county and

00:12:28.800 the biggest incarcerating state in the biggest incarcerating country in the world. With that

00:12:33.120 being said, there are multitudes of organizations that have sought to capitalize on this. That's

00:12:40.320 what mass incarceration is really all about. It's about using fear and incarceration and

00:12:46.580 criminalization to get votes and money, whether it be from politicians looking for votes or money

00:12:52.620 or from private organizations and even public organizations like public workers unions looking

00:12:57.840 to capitalize off of incarceration so to the second point around the school to prison pipeline

00:13:06.000 i think that that is largely a product of what we were just talking about a product of patriarchy

00:13:12.840 and the idea that domination is power and that if you can dominate somebody you somehow quote

00:13:18.060 unquote win so when you have children who are maybe acting in ways that adults don't want them

00:13:25.000 to a way to get them to act right is to dominate them, is to isolate them, is to quote unquote

00:13:31.840 punish them, which we know to be just a euphemism for enact revenge against them.

00:13:36.460 And it really shows the school to prison pipeline really shows how overboard our sick addiction

00:13:43.660 to domination as power has become because we live in a country where it's okay to hit

00:13:49.360 children. It is acceptable and even expected to physically hit defenseless children. And if that's

00:13:58.360 our culture, then of course it's okay to us to also lock up children, to also forcibly strip

00:14:05.540 search children, to put children in solitary confinement, to put children in, until very

00:14:12.480 recently, life without the possibility of parole sentences, death row sentences, because our

00:14:18.640 culture teaches us because of this notion of patriarchy and domination as power. That is how

00:14:23.740 you win. That is what, quote unquote, teaches people a lesson is by violently striking down

00:14:28.660 on them. Wow, Richie, thank you. So I know that there's these three main theories behind the

00:14:36.120 school to prison pipeline, which I just want to briefly cover so that our listeners can dive into

00:14:40.560 this conversation with some background information. The first theory is backed up by studies that show

00:14:45.700 how it costs less to house people of color than white people in prisons because the average white

00:14:51.000 person in prison is significantly older and often has higher health costs. Therefore, for-profit 0.70

00:14:57.440 prisons make a higher profit off of the exploitation of people of color, thus incentivizing them to

00:15:03.960 lobby for policies which encourage the detention of youth. Other theories include schools willfully

00:15:10.600 reporting so-called underachieving students to law enforcement in order to remove them from the

00:15:16.540 schools, which would lead to stronger scores on generalized testing and incur greater state and

00:15:22.940 federal funding, as well as over-policing and then implicit racial bias. But what I'd really

00:15:30.080 like to focus on is the devaluing of life and the assigned value and worth of young men of color

00:15:37.020 in context to patriarchy, as well as whatever you're willing to share around your own experience

00:15:44.060 and that of other young men who end up in prisons for things that happen to them as children, really.

00:15:50.900 Yeah. Thank you for offering that background. What comes up for me when I listen to those

00:15:56.500 type of things is that there's two things happening that come from the same source.

00:16:01.520 On one hand, we have systems, the school system, the prison system, police agencies that are systemically exploiting people or abusing people for the sake of the benefit of the system.

00:16:17.620 On the other hand, you have people, individual people, making harmful choices sometimes because you can also go to jail without doing anything or for doing something that's very minor.

00:16:29.240 And I think it's important to point out that the sources of both of these buckets of harm, if you will, the systemic harm and the individual harm, both come from patriarchy.

00:16:40.800 Because they're ultimately both fueled from this idea that domination is power and that cis-hetero men are inherently dominant and inherently powerful and are valued by how violent we are willing to be.

00:16:54.320 So real life example, I'll use my own.

00:16:57.140 I really robbed two stores. I did not go to jail for something I didn't do. I made that choice

00:17:03.900 within the context of being raised to feel like having money and being financially independent

00:17:10.040 is what gave me value. I was kicked out of my house when I was 16 years old. A little bit before

00:17:15.100 that, when I was a young teenager, my dad told me, I can see you in your future asking your

00:17:21.800 brothers for money because my younger brothers, he experienced them as more responsible than I was.

00:17:27.140 And I told him with so much pride, I can still remember the rage I had in my heart, I will starve in the gutter before I ask any of you for money. And I was committed to that. And when I got kicked out of my house, I valued myself based on my ability to make money with no skills, 16 years old, in the streets, because patriarchy doesn't tell us that you have to be responsible, necessarily. It just says you have to make money.

00:17:52.720 And I was committed to doing that. So when I lost my job, I robbed two stores. All of those

00:17:58.600 decisions were made in patriarchy. That doesn't mean I'm not responsible for them. I'm absolutely

00:18:03.180 responsible for every choice I made as an individual. But those choices were made in

00:18:07.220 patriarchy. And then on the other hand, what you have happening within the same story, not only was

00:18:13.380 I kicked out of my house at 16, but I was kicked out of school when I was 16. Not because I had

00:18:17.720 bad grades, but because I had good grades. I had the ability to graduate as an 11th grader

00:18:23.180 because I had good grades and I completed all of my requirements to graduate high school.

00:18:28.120 And there's a policy in LAUSD, the Los Angeles School Department, where you can do that.

00:18:33.120 And my principal, who didn't like me because of my politics, told me, no, I will not let you

00:18:40.960 graduate with the seniors. And if you don't want to go to school anymore here, you should drop out.

00:18:45.720 and once you're out of school for six months you'll be able to be considered a dropout and

00:18:52.480 you can get your gd so that's exactly what i did and i also grew up in the la usd los angeles

00:18:58.480 unified school district that had the zero tolerance policy where i had been chokeslammed by

00:19:04.440 the school police department for talking out of turn la usd has its own police department the los

00:19:12.380 Angeles school police department is an entire police department with armed guards on campuses,

00:19:17.560 including elementary schools. The city of Los Angeles invests over half of its general budget

00:19:23.180 into police. Up until very recently in the city of LA, if you were late to school or ditching school,

00:19:30.620 you didn't get in trouble. You went to court. You had a case. You had to go to court. You were

00:19:35.640 arrested. My first time being arrested, I was 13 years old for leaving school early to get a haircut.

00:19:41.540 it. The first time I was put in handcuffs was for roughhousing. When I was 12, me and another

00:19:46.920 black boy were put in handcuffs. We didn't go talk to a school counselor about being too

00:19:53.460 aggressive and what that might do if we bump someone else at school. We didn't talk about

00:19:57.120 consent. We didn't talk about any of that. We were put in handcuffs and went to talk to the police.

00:20:01.680 So both of these things are happening at the same time. On one hand, I'm making harmful choices

00:20:06.940 based in patriarchy. On the other hand, we have an entire system. We have an entire quote unquote

00:20:12.160 public safety apparatus that's based in patriarchy that seeks to dominate for the sake of power and

00:20:17.280 control. And that's their vision of safety. And it all culminates when I decide to rob this store.

00:20:23.820 And in response to me robbing this store, here's what didn't happen. What didn't happen is

00:20:28.680 the victims were never consulted. That never happened. The victims were never given any

00:20:33.840 therapy because there's plenty of people in the store. It must have been extremely traumatizing

00:20:37.540 for them to even see that, let alone the people who are actually at the cash registers. They never

00:20:42.120 were given any therapy. The stores were not even paid back. There was never any reconciliation

00:20:47.460 between me and them. There was never any healing encouraged on their behalf. To this day, they

00:20:55.500 could be sitting in this room. I wouldn't know who they are. They wouldn't know who I was. We're not

00:20:59.380 allowed to communicate with each other. I tried to write them and apologize to them a couple years

00:21:03.420 later, I got a letter from the district attorney's office of Los Angeles telling me I cannot do that.

00:21:07.560 It's illegal. I can get in trouble if I try to apologize to them. The DAs are supposed to be

00:21:13.200 the go-between the victims and the people who committed the acts of harm, but they will only

00:21:17.740 allow communication that is negative towards the offender. So even if victims write a letter to

00:21:22.920 the prison for a parole hearing saying, let him out, we forgive him, they oftentimes refuse to

00:21:27.800 facilitate that communication. They'll only facilitate it if they're saying, keep him there,

00:21:31.580 we hate him so they have a vested interest in keeping people in hateful places that are not

00:21:36.340 good for their own healing so that's a system that's the system that we have i robbed these

00:21:41.780 two stores and what i got is i got pistol whipped with a shotgun beat up by two grown men i was

00:21:49.620 19 year old kid 150 pounds locked in handcuffed kidnapped sent away from my family they tried to

00:21:56.360 give me 150 years to life. Thank God I have a community around me that donated money through

00:22:01.640 GoFundMe so I could get a private lawyer and get 10 years instead of 150 years. And then I was held

00:22:09.100 at gunpoint away from my family for seven years. Now, what part of that solved any harm or restored

00:22:14.720 anybody? That's the apparatus we have, one that's based in patriarchy, domination. And all the while

00:22:20.440 they made money. I worked as a firefighter for 14 cents an hour, putting out fires in California.

00:22:26.360 The private companies that you mentioned earlier, like Global Telling, which they do the phone calls for prisoners, they made thousands of dollars off my family's prisons.

00:22:37.200 If you ever drive into a California prison, which are purposely put in the middle of nowhere, it's like desert, desert, desert, nothing, and then a whole town, often beautiful towns, because there's an entire economy that sprung up around this prison.

00:22:48.660 because California prison system has one of the biggest budgets of any of our state agencies,

00:22:53.800 $12 billion, $12.8 billion this year. And all the private companies that then benefit off that,

00:22:59.720 the gas stations for the visitors who are going to go see their loved ones,

00:23:02.960 the package companies that you can buy your medicine and clothes and food through while

00:23:09.340 you're in prison. There's telecommunications companies, the contractors that build prisons,

00:23:14.240 that maintain prisons. There's just a huge exploitive patriarchal entity that is our

00:23:20.800 quote-unquote public safety system, our quote-unquote criminal justice system,

00:23:24.840 that is also operating from a place of patriarchy as well. So my story perfectly paints how

00:23:29.860 patriarchy plus patriarchy equals patriarchy. Harm plus harm equals harm. And then they wonder

00:23:35.240 why most people who get out of prison are worse than they started.

00:23:44.240 guitar solo

00:24:14.240 Love it right. Hold somebody tight. Love this life. We should love our life. Love it right.

00:24:28.560 Love our life. Choose this alive. There's a fire in the sky.

00:24:35.460 I am totally floored by thinking about you as a young child 12 13 years old experiencing so much

00:24:47.920 violence and then of course it would make sense that that is what you've been conditioned to then

00:24:54.340 do is to reenact the violence because that's what would happen to you and then to think that you

00:24:59.520 couldn't even apologize. There's just no restorative justice. There's no connection

00:25:05.200 to be healed afterwards. It's insane. I mean, everything that you were just saying is like,

00:25:11.400 it almost, it gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse as you continue to tell the story.

00:25:16.520 It's unbelievable. But of course, it is very believable because this is what's happening,

00:25:21.400 and we need to see it for what it is. $12.8 billion. I mean, that's insane. It's absolutely

00:25:27.800 crazy. Thank you for those details. You have an article that you penned titled, I always knew one

00:25:36.760 day I'd go to jail. And you write, quote, sending people who act out harmfully in the community

00:25:42.600 miles away from anyone invested in their growth to a place full of other harmful people under the 0.95

00:25:48.260 guise that it will make them more responsible is ridiculous. The fact is we are spending billions

00:25:54.700 of dollars a year on vengeance instead of safety. What most people call justice is really just

00:26:01.280 revenge, and it's expensive, not to mention often carried out more harshly against people of color,

00:26:08.000 end quote. It's absolutely true that geography and space are negligently left out of the national

00:26:16.520 discourse around prison reform. The incarcerated are moved hours away from their families,

00:26:21.160 like you mentioned, sometimes even to different states. And it really is so antithetical to

00:26:27.640 community healing and individual healing to remove them from their community is not just a punishment

00:26:35.480 to them, but it's an act of violence to all of those in their life. So I'd really like if you

00:26:41.220 could speak more to the current system and culture where our initial idea of a solution

00:26:47.120 is that of banishment? Yeah, I think that the banishment is only a product of a society which

00:26:56.560 wishes to seem civil on the level of the world stage. So what we really do in this culture is

00:27:06.740 we want to cause as much violence and harm in your life as we can get away with without looking

00:27:12.420 barbaric so if they took me out of my robbery and cut my hand off they wouldn't be able to claim

00:27:20.840 this you know land of the free home of the brave narrative but by all of the wounds being economic

00:27:27.420 and emotional and um the scars being to my mental health and to my spiritual well-being

00:27:34.100 then they get to look like they're still good people like this is a humane way to deal with it

00:27:41.060 And I think that's where the banishment comes from. And the reason why we're sent so far away

00:27:45.720 has everything to do with economics as well. You know, cities bid, counties bid to have prisons

00:27:51.420 in them because they know what it does for the economy of the area. There's a book by Ruthie

00:27:56.420 Gilmore called Golden Gulag, which is specifically the economic story of the California prison boom.

00:28:05.280 A lot of these places where these prisons were built were places where their industries dried

00:28:10.280 up. They're old mining towns. During the 40s and during the war, these were towns that were

00:28:17.900 building weapons for the war effort. And then once the wars were over, once Korea was over,

00:28:23.960 once Vietnam was over, they didn't have anything to do there. So they built prisons instead. 0.87

00:28:28.920 Places where agriculture dried up and it doesn't make sense there anymore because it's desert,

00:28:35.480 it's barren. So they built prisons instead. It has everything to do with economics.

00:28:40.280 where these prisons are. And it has everything to do with racism of where the people start.

00:28:46.060 Most people in prison are coming from urban areas. They're people of color who are coming

00:28:52.280 from cities. And then they're being sent to these rural areas where the economies have died for one 1.00

00:28:58.580 reason or another. And that results in, like you said, an act of violence towards the family as

00:29:03.880 well. People who haven't seen their loved ones snatched out of their lives and haven't seen them

00:29:08.400 for years, sometimes for decades, because they're sent hundreds of miles away. And oftentimes these

00:29:13.640 are poor and working class families that can't afford to drive 400, 500 miles to go see their

00:29:21.820 loved ones. The farthest I ever was from home, I was in a terrible place called Susanville, 1.00

00:29:27.220 California. It's very close to the northeastern tip of California. And it was a 10 hour drive

00:29:33.860 for my family back in Los Angeles. Who's going to go drive 10 hours through the Sierra Mountains

00:29:40.800 where you need snow chains to go see somebody? We don't have snow chains. We're from LA.

00:29:47.820 My wife had to learn how to put snow chains on her own car by trial and error, driving through 0.91

00:29:53.940 the snow at high altitudes where people would regularly drive off the road and die. Icy roads, 0.56

00:30:00.160 storms has everything to do with economics and and racism that's truly the source of that that

00:30:09.720 banishment i'm really interested how you were speaking to why prisons are erected where they

00:30:19.740 are and i think about you know we were speaking earlier before the conversation the podcast

00:30:24.140 started about the environmental intersections with prisons and i just thought oh my gosh okay

00:30:29.940 here it is there's land that has been colonized so the indigenous people have been kicked out

00:30:36.300 the resources have been completely stripped of water of topsoil of whatever abundance there

00:30:43.380 once was on that land because of mining because of some type of resource extraction project and

00:30:48.660 then when they're like oh well now the land is basically worthless you know economically speaking

00:30:54.140 because they've destroyed this land and it's like oh well great we'll just basically enslave people

00:30:59.740 in these prisons as the new resource, as the new way to extract from the land is to put people

00:31:06.340 into places that no longer can serve capitalism. And that is, oh my gosh, because I have chills

00:31:14.540 because I've definitely driven by, you know, and I've been on long road trips and I've seen where

00:31:18.940 prisons are. And I do find that, that it's usually in these places that are barren because of some

00:31:24.540 type of resource extraction issue that has happened, whether it was 50 years ago, 30 years

00:31:30.900 ago, 20 years ago. So that's really coming full circle to see how, yeah, just to see how that all

00:31:37.740 works out. And it's really, it's horrifying. I think one of the saddest examples of that

00:31:44.900 was the valley fever outbreak that took place over the last five years, 10 years. For those

00:31:53.160 who haven't heard of it valley fever is a deadly disease that is made up of fungus that lives

00:32:02.320 underground oh right in much of the central valley of california and that's where it stays that's

00:32:12.160 where it thrives but if it gets into the human body it colonizes the human body and kills the

00:32:16.300 host often, specifically to Black people and to Asian folks, API folks, and to white folks as well,

00:32:27.700 because oftentimes Latinx folks have indigenous heritage to this land and built, genetically have

00:32:36.160 built an immunity. So here comes CDCR building all these prisons in the middle of the Central

00:32:42.940 Valley and filling them up mostly with black people. And people were dying and they couldn't 1.00

00:32:48.100 figure out why. I've seen people get Valley fever. People were getting Valley fever in prisons where

00:32:52.640 I was. You'll see somebody go from being 250 pounds to being 120 pounds in the course of

00:32:59.280 three to six months. And then they're gone because CDCR was building and continuing to build and

00:33:07.460 expand upon these prisons. So one of them, Pleasant Valley State Prison, which is in the

00:33:11.660 middle of the central valley they have thousands of people locked up in this prison and they wanted

00:33:16.440 to expand a part of the prison like build a prison hospital on the land and when they broke ground

00:33:21.680 and started building it they let out a bunch of this valley fever and it was a statewide

00:33:25.340 problem to where they had to start transferring people from all over the state and you can't be

00:33:31.400 at this prison you can't be at this prison it was a whole crisis within the prison system that

00:33:35.320 largely went unnoticed outside of the prison system because nobody else lives in these places

00:33:39.860 besides people in prison. But the cops know. The cops know to wear masks. They know not to put

00:33:45.880 cops to work at those prisons who were Black cops because of the Valley Fever problem.

00:33:50.600 And we lost a lot of our friends and longtime loved ones who were incarcerated with us

00:33:56.020 due to Valley Fever because of the development of unsafe land, dry unsafe land. It got worse

00:34:03.860 during the drought that we had a few years ago because there was no water to keep the

00:34:08.240 ground down. So when they would break ground, it would be these huge clouds of deadly dust

00:34:13.320 traveling across the valley, killing people. Now that you've told the story, I remember

00:34:18.280 watching this short 12 minute documentary. It may have just been called Dust. And it was all about

00:34:23.420 the valley fever outbreaks in the Central Valley. And it was horrifying. It showed this one man who

00:34:28.720 had gotten it and they didn't know what was wrong with him. He ended up getting this huge

00:34:33.500 like tumor on his head he couldn't see it was like the worst pain of his life the migraines

00:34:38.860 the cluster headaches he was in so much pain and to see the degeneration and and this was a man who

00:34:45.820 actually had access to I'm sure much better health care than what they have in prisons and

00:34:51.040 to see his journey through valley fever was horrifying and it yeah it was all from the dust

00:34:56.820 and the like what you're saying the fungus that lives under this dust so that's just another

00:35:00.180 completely untold issue that you know who's talking about that so thank you for bringing

00:35:06.600 that up now i'd like to transition into a conversation around the necessity of community

00:35:12.500 friendships and long-term relationships when it comes to dismantling patriarchy bell hooks writes

00:35:18.300 quote the work of male relational recovery of reconnection of forming intimacy and making

00:35:24.600 community can never be done alone in a world where boys and men are daily losing their way

00:35:30.140 we must create guides, signposts, and new paths. A culture of healing that empowers males to change

00:35:37.500 is in the making, end quote. So in your own experience, inside and outside of prison,

00:35:44.260 what did this community and system of accountability look like for you?

00:35:49.100 Simply pose the greatest joy of my life to build real relationships that began for me inside of

00:35:56.480 prison. Relationships were real friends who, you know, bell hooks uses the definition of love,

00:36:04.300 which is actually originally penned by M. Scott Peck, which is that love is the spiritual

00:36:09.960 investment of oneself into the spiritual growth of another. When we were able to start building

00:36:16.040 these anti-patriarchal relationships, these love-based relationships in prison, I had never

00:36:21.660 felt freer before in my life because now I had somebody who I could give a real hug to now I

00:36:28.900 have somebody who when they asked me how I was doing I could be honest about that somebody who

00:36:33.780 I could be open about my insecurities with somebody who I can be open about my trauma with

00:36:39.940 somebody who I can ask for their support in a way that's not just like give me solutions to

00:36:46.260 a problem but it's like just be with me in this pain that i'm in um and invest that same energy

00:36:53.440 into others and stand firm for somebody trying to be the best them they can be it really is

00:37:00.680 something that we learned in success stories is like when you give people the opportunity to be

00:37:06.180 real human beings they will take it we want it we've wanted it our whole lives we just need to

00:37:12.780 create the context in which it's okay to be that way. And once we did, we were free. I had never

00:37:20.380 felt freer and I was still in prison. Thinking of a follow-up question I have is around making sure

00:37:28.360 that said male community is attentive to the likelihood of reinforcing patriarchal structures

00:37:35.560 and behaviors in their own systems of accountability. So I guess I'm wondering,

00:37:41.100 how can men stay committed to educating one another about patriarchy without furthering

00:37:47.140 an unbalanced power dynamic? Or what kind of community infrastructure is required for these

00:37:54.240 networks to thrive? I think the understanding that we're going to do something patriarchal,

00:38:02.540 we're going to have patriarchal thoughts. And the humility to one, admit that to myself,

00:38:08.940 that I'm going to show up in that way.

00:38:11.080 And the humility to take that feedback from someone else

00:38:13.440 and to give that feedback to somebody else

00:38:15.340 is absolutely required

00:38:17.760 in order to build that type of community.

00:38:20.320 We're not seeking to build a quote unquote healed community

00:38:23.420 because once you're healed, you cannot be healed.

00:38:26.180 There's no more room to grow.

00:38:27.840 We're seeking to build a community

00:38:29.240 in which healing has a context and a safe space

00:38:33.620 and it is okay.

00:38:35.360 And that requires the understanding that I'm not perfect.

00:38:38.940 that I'm a mess up and that we have the trust in each other that I'll listen to you when you're

00:38:44.880 saying, bro, that's not it. Bro, you're on some BS right now. We need to establish that,

00:38:51.280 that humility and that trust.

00:39:08.940 Be your wave in the ocean

00:39:16.020 Wash your body clean

00:39:21.600 Together we gon' run

00:39:29.780 Like the wind to the sun

00:39:32.760 We gon' run, we gon' run, we gon' run

00:39:38.500 I'd really also love to talk about the timing of liberation and how it can be drawn out,

00:39:55.340 especially when tackling historical ways of knowing, you know, and being in this world.

00:40:01.380 And I'm thinking back to the documentary you were featured in, The Feminist on Cell Block Y,

00:40:07.140 and we can see how men of all generations are showing up and engaging with this work

00:40:12.320 and i'd love if you could speak to your own experience in dismantling patriarchy and the

00:40:17.960 sort of generational nuances you found in the conversation you held alongside other men in

00:40:23.840 prison so my understanding my experience is that liberation is not a time it is not a goal it is

00:40:32.000 not a finite um place to arrive that liberation is our way of being as we fight for freedom

00:40:42.180 so there will always be some sort of oppression some sort of mismanagement of resources

00:40:52.340 misallocation unfair allocation of power or resources how are we relating to each other

00:40:59.740 and ourselves as we build the world that doesn't have that, as we squash those problems as they

00:41:06.840 arise. I feel like that's where liberation exists. I'm sorry, what were your other questions?

00:41:14.360 Well, that is amazing to start with. Yeah, I'm really interested about also the generational

00:41:21.040 nuances when you're having these conversations around dismantling patriarchy. How was it speaking

00:41:27.080 with other men in prison, especially those older than you or younger even, just the generational

00:41:32.920 nuances of that all. Yeah. Patriarchal culture changes and shifts and it looks very different

00:41:40.320 generation to generation. It looks very different in different circles of people, different races

00:41:45.900 of people. Something that I find fascinating about every generation is that there always seems to be

00:41:52.320 something that looks anti-patriarchal on its face but is in fact patriarchal up under it so i'll

00:41:59.080 give you an example the kind of swag of the 70s of wearing curlers in your hair and bright colors

00:42:04.740 and high heels and platform shoes all of those things if if we just see that on its face it

00:42:10.860 looks like oh that's almost like drag these are really some liberated comfortable dudes but that

00:42:15.960 was pimp culture that dressed like that you know that was gangsta culture that dressed like that

00:42:21.580 That was, you know, the rock stars that were, or even the singer-songwriters that would sing these beautiful songs about love, but in actuality were objectifying women and using them as sexual and economic objects. 0.89

00:42:35.900 Patriarchy will always find a way to protect itself in culture.

00:42:39.320 So we have the same thing today, where we have rappers who sing on the track and wear tight pants and may even get their nails done and have colorful hair.

00:42:49.200 But when we're listening to what they're saying, they're reinforcing the objectification and 0.89

00:42:53.880 oppression of women. So understanding those cultural nuances is important. Understanding 0.79

00:43:02.260 what patriarchy looks like from culture to culture, gender to gender, generation to generation

00:43:08.160 really helps in dismantling it because I have to know who I'm talking to. When I'm talking to

00:43:13.520 somebody in my dad's generation, they're going to feel perfectly comfortable. My dad's in his 50s.

00:43:18.680 he's he's going to feel perfectly comfortable putting down gangbanging and all that stuff

00:43:24.940 that happened kind of after his time that really popularized after his time but he's going to hold

00:43:30.720 that old school especially being black because it happens at the intersections right but that like 0.64

00:43:35.380 old school black christian you know defend the household the man manages the books the wife makes 0.51

00:43:43.460 the food kind of that kind of patriarchy i experienced him as very wedded too so dismantling 0.58

00:43:49.740 patriarchy for him looks different than dismantling patriarchy with the homies who are my age

00:43:53.540 um and looks different than dismantling patriarchy with with a white dude who 0.72

00:43:58.900 on his face might look like the acceptable you know quote-unquote acceptable american man

00:44:05.500 um but patriarchy might not look like street harassment in the white community i don't go to

00:44:10.600 a lot of white communities and see people yelling out their windows at women and at

00:44:14.300 queer folks the way that you do in communities of color.

00:44:16.760 But what you do see is the subtle talking over women, putting women into very specific

00:44:22.700 roles in the workplace, and white men treating women in a very, like, let me teach you kind

00:44:28.720 of way, assuming that women are incompetent professionally is something that I see more

00:44:33.600 in the white community than I do in communities of color, where women are often the leaders 0.99

00:44:37.820 of households and of organizations.

00:44:39.580 So it's just like you have to know not only the generational differences, but the cultural differences of each kind of subset of people you're talking to in order to really dismantle patriarchy because it'll trick you into thinking if we buy into these racist notions that patriarchy is only misogynist rap music or patriarchy is only angsta culture, then we'll miss religious patriarchy.

00:45:03.580 We'll miss white professional patriarchy. It requires of me and to all of those of us who consider ourselves to be feminist allies and freedom fighters in this space to really study patriarchy and know what it looks like in all of its different forms in order to dismantle it across the generations, cultures, races, genders.

00:45:23.860 Oh my gosh, I really appreciated your examples. And so true. I mean, I do see that. And it's interesting how some men can look politically correct or acceptable, you know, especially in the white culture.

00:45:43.460 but then all these other ways of demeaning women and people of color and trans and you know

00:45:53.120 oppressed people but they can look like they're playing the role of being a politically correct

00:45:58.780 person but all the ways that it comes out and yeah i mean there's so many there's so many forms

00:46:04.320 of it and i really i liked hearing your analysis of it i really also want to highlight your work

00:46:10.840 And of you and your wife that you do with Initiate Justice, which both of you founded in 2016 as a way to mobilize the currently and previously incarcerated and their loved ones into a movement that is directly leading criminal justice reform efforts.

00:46:28.840 So I'd really like if you could speak to the inside outside strategy you have devised and a little bit more about the organization itself.

00:46:36.960 Thank you. So while we were doing success stories, actually, we were doing the anti-patriarchy work in prisons, Charles and I had realized like there's really no incentive for people to go to this program outside of just wanting to change.

00:46:50.120 But people should be able to get time off their sentences for going to this program. We should be able to decarcerate California while also ending patriarchy in California through this program.

00:46:59.380 so we told that to taina and taina's background is in state policy and political science and

00:47:06.740 taina said well let's write a bill let's make it the law and she instructed charles and i to do

00:47:13.020 the research on the bill because we had access to the prison law library and a lot of prison

00:47:17.040 regulations and stuff that's just hard to find outside of prison so we did the research sent it

00:47:21.620 to her she formatted it as a bill idea she got it introduced in the state legislature

00:47:26.100 And we realized that being in prison, we actually, in trying to get this bill passed, we had a lot of opportunity because you look out onto a California prison yard and you have people from every county, every legislative district in the state.

00:47:42.080 So we started organizing people in prison to have their families write letters of support for the bill.

00:47:47.760 That kind of was the birth of the Inside Outside strategy.

00:47:50.980 That bill ultimately didn't make it.

00:47:54.480 The governor, I hit up the author and told Assemblymember Stone, who authored the bill,

00:48:00.760 hey, you know what, go ahead and kill the bill.

00:48:02.360 I can do this more powerful with the ballot initiative.

00:48:04.940 And, you know, we didn't trust anybody, especially anybody in the government at that time.

00:48:09.020 So we thought they were just trying to kill the bill.

00:48:11.280 But the author listened and lo and behold, the governor came with what ultimately became

00:48:15.720 Prop 57, which is a much stronger version of what we were doing.

00:48:20.340 And we then mobilized behind Prop 57.

00:48:24.480 And we realized that, look, you can stand in front of a target and collect signatures for a proposition, but most people walking out of Target do not care about this.

00:48:33.200 They don't care about people in prison being able to earn time off their sentences.

00:48:36.400 But the families of people in prison do.

00:48:38.580 So we need to organize through the prison.

00:48:41.040 So we were sending Prop 57 information sheets with voter sign-up packets through people in prison telling them, send this to your loved one.

00:48:48.900 Have them register to vote and vote yes on this.

00:48:51.360 And we sent out 2,000 of those.

00:48:52.920 and building that membership inside and building that membership outside of the loved ones receiving

00:48:58.620 those packets is how we started building these two bases of incarcerated people inside and then

00:49:04.260 formerly incarcerated people and the loved ones of incarcerated people on the outside and ultimately

00:49:08.620 due to obviously a statewide coalition's work but including our work prop 57 passed we got it

00:49:15.900 implemented with talking points that derived from a survey of 3 000 people in prison of how it should

00:49:21.940 be implemented. And it was because of that legislation that I'm home right now. I wasn't

00:49:26.620 supposed to go home until March 30th, 2020. But that law allowed me to earn my way out and come

00:49:31.900 home July 16th, 2018. And now we have 14,500 members in prison, 120 organizers in prison,

00:49:41.340 a training program for organizers on the outside as well. We're doing four bills this year, one to

00:49:47.620 get people on parole the right to vote back, one to apply Prop 57 credits to people who came to

00:49:53.580 prison as children, another to get rid of medical co-pays in jails and prisons. I mean, now,

00:50:01.060 you know, 14,500 people in prison and their loved ones, we have a political base. Like,

00:50:05.040 we can really move things. That is so amazing and exciting and so,

00:50:10.440 so strategically smart. I mean, to think of, like what you said, the people who

00:50:15.700 really care about this issue are the families at home with the people that are in prison and to

00:50:21.140 really understand who your base is and who you know would actually take up energy and time and

00:50:27.100 resources to vote and to organize around it it's so beautiful and i don't like the word hope but i

00:50:33.940 imagine the feeling of hope or something like that running through the prisons through yourself

00:50:39.960 through others and and especially that the bill got passed um or the proposition that you were

00:50:45.060 talking about it's we need to hear success stories like this we need to hear that it is possible

00:50:52.400 it's possible for these things to get done um and oh i really i really love that and i i want to

00:50:59.540 talk more about the bills that you've started mentioning with initiate justice and what they're

00:51:05.080 pushing through but before that i'd actually like to delve deeper into the history of voter

00:51:09.880 disenfranchisement. A cause initiate justice particularly is attuned to. So perhaps you'd

00:51:16.360 be willing to talk about the origins of felony disenfranchisement, which was written into

00:51:22.820 California's constitution back in 1849, after they initially rejected the 14th Amendment. 0.68

00:51:29.060 Correct. So we know that the way that the 13th Amendment was written was saying that slavery

00:51:35.580 was illegal and less in punishment of a crime, and that there is a very active campaign on the

00:51:42.380 behalf of governments, which are controlled by white Americans, to now criminalize Black people

00:51:47.320 to put them back into a position of slavery. Part of that was to make sure that Black folks 0.94

00:51:52.540 couldn't vote. So for years, Black people technically could vote, but legally, there is no 0.81

00:51:59.340 legal, national legal protection to allow them to vote. So a lot of municipalities and states

00:52:03.920 remove Black folks' right to vote. And then you had the 14th Amendment, which was supposed to

00:52:08.040 guarantee nationally that Black people had the right to vote. California actually didn't ratify

00:52:12.880 the 14th Amendment, allowing Black men to vote, I should be specific, until 1968. 0.68

00:52:19.460 Wow.

00:52:20.120 So yeah, like my dad was already alive before California ratified the 14th Amendment.

00:52:26.760 What California did do, though, is they managed to write it into their state constitution

00:52:30.560 to disallow a large group of people from voting.

00:52:35.700 California has a strong history of racism

00:52:38.380 towards people of Chinese descent.

00:52:40.920 The Chinese were not allowed to vote. 0.93

00:52:43.560 The Irish were not allowed to vote.

00:52:45.300 There was an entire political party

00:52:46.560 dedicated to oppressing the Irish in California.

00:52:49.600 And the language in the original constitution,

00:52:52.740 if you go and read it, is crazy.

00:52:54.260 It says something to the effect of 1.00

00:52:57.220 any retard, idiot, moron, or criminal will never have the right to vote. And it wasn't until the 1.00

00:53:05.100 70s when they took out all of that terribly oppressive language around morons and idiots, 1.00

00:53:10.900 but they left the part around quote unquote criminal and then further specified it to say 1.00

00:53:16.420 meaning people in prison or on parole. Oh my gosh. Unbelievable, but not,

00:53:22.860 Not unbelievable, but it's just to hear it again, like to really be able to hear the dates of when people were and were not allowed to vote is important because it really wasn't that long ago.

00:53:34.840 We're still very much in the culture of the past, quote unquote.

00:53:39.040 It's not of the past.

00:53:39.820 It's now.

00:53:40.340 Even though people are allowed to vote now, not everybody's allowed to vote.

00:53:43.160 And there's all these issues that are coming up.

00:53:44.820 And I think it's very important to be reminded of these issues.

00:53:49.520 Now, I know we've had a really great conversation for a while and I have one last question for you. And I'm really thinking about the slaughter of emotional vitality under patriarchy, under a system in which women are patronized for their emotions and men are told to basically silence theirs.

00:54:10.180 So I'd really like to talk about accessing and accepting vulnerability as an emotional state and how we can strengthen our emotions in the face of patriarchy's collapse. What are the steps we can take in refusing to collude with patriarchal culture and restoring reverence to emotional beings?

00:54:30.020 I think the key is reminding ourselves that our emotions are not what makes us weak. They are what makes us strong. That our vulnerability is not what makes us weak. It's what makes us strong. That living with rather than living on top of or seeking to dominate is what makes us strong.

00:54:49.140 it's just like how we relate to the earth for the last few hundred years people have related to the

00:54:54.140 earth as this is something to dominate and exploit for my own gain and we are literally destroying

00:55:00.580 the planet like there literally will not be we will be gone within a hundred years so it looks

00:55:05.520 like we're winning but we're actually losing and the people who lived amongst the earth and worked

00:55:10.460 with it and were vulnerable when there were storms they had to work with it right like we

00:55:15.960 were talking about earlier when there's heat we had to work with it they were vulnerable but they

00:55:20.060 won there's people on this land that's now called the u.s for 10 000 years no global warming

00:55:26.940 no black stuff all in the ocean 10 000 years in the course of 200 it's almost gone because we're

00:55:36.120 trying to dominate it and we do the same things within ourselves trying to dominate those emotions

00:55:40.600 smush them down trying to dominate others smush them down trying to act as if emotions are a

00:55:44.860 weakness, we're actually the ones who lose. We end up with the mental health problems. We end

00:55:49.360 up with the depression. We end up killing ourselves. We end up killing each other.

00:55:52.980 We end up drinking ourselves or smoking ourselves into oblivion. Our survival is based on our

00:55:59.760 willingness to hold that discomfort, hold that vulnerability, hold those emotions.

00:56:06.960 Richie, you are such an incredible human being. I feel completely honored to have shared this

00:56:14.180 time with you, with all the work that you've done, all of, and your personal experiences and

00:56:19.640 the trauma that you've worked through in order to even speak the way you speak about these topics

00:56:24.800 and then help others in your own journey. I wish I could give you a hug and just like a high five

00:56:31.140 or something. I don't know, but just like, please, like, I, I want to, I want to support you in

00:56:37.280 whatever ways we can at For the Wild and get people to rally around the bills that you're

00:56:42.160 working on and um and support the organizations that you have founded co-founded and work with

00:56:48.400 because the work you're doing is really deep and it's very multifaceted yes of course like

00:56:56.720 there's so much about prisons but it's so much more than that it's about the culture it's about

00:57:00.780 how prisons even are sustaining themselves the slavery of imprisonment the ways in which people

00:57:06.760 connect with one another connecting with their families i mean this is very very deep work

00:57:11.260 that you're doing. And I really am so grateful for you. So thank you for this time that you've

00:57:17.920 shared with us, but also just thank you for your life. And I just want to support you to keep going

00:57:23.860 because this is huge stuff that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ayanna. Thank you

00:57:28.560 for having me on. Thank you for creating the space for these conversations and for all the

00:57:33.760 kind things you said I just and everything that we try to do whether it be in the workshops of

00:57:41.660 success stories the policy work of initiate justice the music we do with question culture

00:57:46.120 what we're ultimately trying to get folks to do is to like tap in to that love that we have

00:57:53.300 inside of us instead of trying to dominate others and every moment we can do that we're

00:58:02.960 We're getting closer to the solution and farther away from literally from

00:58:06.340 death. So the more of us who do it, the freer we'll be.

00:58:20.080 Hi everyone. This is Hannah,

00:58:22.080 one of the writers and researchers here at For the Wild.

00:58:25.060 I'd like to mention a few action points for this week.

00:58:29.060 First, Initiate Justice, which Richie co-founded with Taina Vargas Edmond,

00:58:34.160 is currently working on three pieces of key legislation, ACA 6, AB 965, and AB 45.

00:58:42.980 For updates on ways in which you can get involved and support, visit initiatejustice.org.

00:58:48.840 Second, if you're a resident of California, go to findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov,

00:58:55.340 locate who your senators and assembly members are and call them saying you support ACA 6,

00:59:01.900 AB 965, and AB 45. For links and more information,

00:59:06.680 you can visit our website or click on the details tab of this episode.

00:59:25.340 Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast.

00:59:38.660 The music you heard today was from Paul Cannon and Lake Mary,

00:59:42.940 and our theme music is from the late and great Kate Wolfe.

00:59:46.380 I'd like to give a shout out to our team,

00:59:48.540 podcast production and editing, Andrew Storrs,

00:59:51.560 writing and lead research, Francesca Glaspell,

00:59:54.060 Outreach and research Hannah Wilton and Aidan McRae

00:59:57.640 Podcast music Carter Lou McElroy

01:00:00.500 Digital community organizing Aaron Wise and Suzanne Dollywall

01:00:04.840 Graphic and web design Erica Ekrum and Melanie Younger with Partnerships and Media

For The Wild - August 28, 2019

RICHIE RESEDA on Dismantling Patriarchy ⧸134

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