Beyond The Box

On this episode of Beyond the Box, Doug Lasdon interviews Eli Northrup, who is running for the open New York Assembly seat that represents Doug's district in Morningside Heights. Northrup has the unusual distinction of having worked as a public defender before jumping into the race, and they discuss the reality of bail reform (not the bogeyman featured in the press); making New York a sanctua...

On this episode of Beyond the Box, Doug and Johnny talk with Chesa Boudin, the former crusading District Attorney of San Francisco who briefly became the contested face of criminal legal reform.  “Historically prosecutors have been all too happy to do the dirty work for the real estate industry, for the political elites, for the economic elites, and that means that we have a system of justice wher...

On this episode of Beyond the Box, Doug and Johnny talk with Molly Greene, the Strategy and Legal director of The Appeal. If you’re not familiar with The Appeal, they are essential reading in our increasingly post-fact world.  The Appeal is “a nonprofit news organization that envisions a world in which systems of support and care, not punishment, create public safety. The Appeal’s journalism expos...

How do you go from being an incarcerated teenager from the Bronx, to a nationally recognized thought leader on criminal justice reform? Doug Lasdon talks with Johnny Perez, his new cohost for Beyond the Box Season 2, about growing up in the Bronx, being incarcerated, becoming a leader in the social justice community, working at and joining the board of UJC, and being the Director of NRCAT’s U.S. P...

Beyond the Box Special Episode: What Is Brad Lander's Vision for NYC? And interview with NYC Comptroller (and Mayoral Candidate) Brad Lander The City Comptroller is a position of tremendous power, tasked with managing the city's fiscal health and rooting out corruption, fraud, and abuse across the entire city government - yet few people can even spell Comptroller, let alone know how impo...

Who are prisons really serving? A small group of companies are turning huge profits off of every aspect of life on the inside, from food to phone calls to transportation - and we’re not just talking about for-profit prisons. Doug Lasdon talks with Bianca Tylek, founder of Worth Rises (formerly: the Corrections Accountability Project at UJC).  Worth Rises is a non-profit advocacy organization dedic...

Is a hero the radical fighting the system, or the person who dedicates their life to transforming it from the inside, or the person who throws their body on the line to rescue their fellow humans? U.S Senator Cory Booker is a hero by every one of those definitions, and he joins Doug Lasdon on Beyond the Box to discuss getting his start at UJC, finding his career path from there, and rescuing peopl...

Who has their eye on the cameras, the cookies, the tracking apps, and the million other devices that are watching you, right now, and selling your data? Doug Lasdon talks with Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (and graduate of the UJC Social Justice Accelerator).  S.T.O.P. fights to end discriminatory surveillance, challenging both individual misconduct and...

Who’s really in New York City prisons, and why, and what happens to them once they’re there – and once they come back out? Doug Lasdon talks with Sarita Daftary and Darren Mack, anti-mass-incarceration advocates, the leaders of the #CloseRikers campaign, and the founding directors of the UJC Freedom Agenda project.  The Freedom Agenda s a member-led project, dedicated to organizing people and comm...

Who keeps New York City running with coffee, kebabs, nuts, hats, pretzels, doughnuts, churros, Korean tacos and more – and who protects their rights when big businesses, the cops, and powerful politicians try to shut them down? Doug Lasdon talks with Mohammed Attia, former street vendor and Director of the UJC Street Vendor Project.  The Street Vendor Project is a membership-based project with mor...

What’s it like working in the sex industry, and who fights for the rights of those who work in the shadows of the legal economy? Doug Lasdon talks with RJ Thompson-Rodriguez, human rights advocate, lawyer, former sex worker, and current director of the UJC Sex Workers Project.  The Sex Workers Project is a national organization that defends the human rights of sex workers by destigmatizing and dec...

Social Justice Podcast hosted by Doug Lasdon, a veteran lawyer who has been on the side of disenfranchised NYers for over 40 years. Each episode will feature a discussion with a social justice fighter in different areas of justice.  https://urbanjustice.org/podcast