Freedom Dreams

A final reflection from Amanda and Casey as they sign off, at least for now. Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To support our work click here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fr...

On July 8th, 2013 people being help in prisons across California stopped eating. They were protesting the state's use of ⁠solitary confinement⁠. 29,000 inmates participated in the strike. On this episode, you'll hear about the origins of this mass movement and how it impacted policy and perception around the use of solitary in the United States. --- Eduardo Dumbrique is studying to become...

"It's the education that goes with wanting to be safe. And if you talk to young people, they get it. They understand the police don't make us safe. The cameras don't make us safe. We make us safe." Myrtle Thompson Curtis , Feedom Freedom Growers --- Myrtle Thompson Curtis is the founder of Feedom Freedom Growers. She is a mother, grandmother, visionary organizer and thinker o...

"The big idea was 1) Be hyperlocal. 2) Determine what resources are needed. 3) Shift the mindset of what the role of policing in the neighborhoods are and how they perform those duties." - Marlon Peterson --- Since his decade of incarceration, Marlon Peterson has written, created programming, lectured, organized, and advocated alongside the formerly incarcerated, victims of gun violence,...

"The absence of any statistics, like data, history, etcetera around informality is what drove me into getting into it because it was like, these are questions that kept me up at night that I wanted to solve." - Richard Wallace, Founder and Executive Director of EAT - Equity and Transformation --- Richard Wallace is the Founder and Executive Director of EAT and Nicole Laport is the Direct...

"We consider ourselves an incubator for transformative justice here in the south. We are committed to really creating a new way of being, of dealing with violence." - Rukia Lumumba , Executive Director, People's Advocacy Institute . Rukia Lumumba comes from a lineage of Black Freedom Fighters. Her dad was Chokwe Lumumba , former member of the Republic of New Africa and eventual mayor...

"We think that there is a basis for human beings to change, and if I didn't think that I wouldn't be involved in this. I often say I, I don't give this speech to alligators...they're not going to change, and I'd be wasting my time. I do think that humans can change and we have to shift the conditions that make it possible for people who may be leaning toward change to want...

"There is not one model or one program that is going to make us safe. There is not one alternative that is going to replace prison. That is not the formula. It's like, what is the whole range of the kind of thing we should do that cumulatively is gonna keep us safe?" - Danielle Sered Danielle Sered is the founder of Common Justice , an organization that develops and advances solution...

"We can do incredible things from a technological medical care standpoint. Right? Like there's been incredible advances in healthcare and with some of the things that we have in terms of like stopping bleeds and doing all these things right to prolong life. But, you know, I knew that there was a gap in terms of  preventing re-injury." - Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Founder of DLIVE: Detroit...

"What if you can still feel a sense of justice without reaching out to the legal system? What if you still can have access to healing without punishment? What if this person who harmed you can do the hard work to never harm anyone ever again? Would that feel like justice for you? And if so, how can we support you in achieving that goal?" - Mike Milton, founder of the Freedom Community Center &nbsp...

This season on Freedom Dreams we're amplifying community-led solutions to violence and harm. We called on some of the boldest people we know to learn lessons from what they're building. And of course, we asked them what their freedom dreams are. Our new season begins on February 22nd.   --- Learn more about the work of the Detroit Justice Center

The Freedom Dreams team is hard at work on a new season of the show. It’ll come to you this fall. But in the meantime, we want to share a conversation Amanda recently had with the incredibly brilliant and tender-hearted philosopher, Lewis Gordon. Their talk was hosted by Source Booksellers in Detroit’s Cass Corridor this past winter. Gordon's new book is Fear of Black Consciousness and in it he pe...

“For anti-colonial movements in the past and still today, regaining access to land that you and your people were displaced from is a core part of what it means to be free.” In this final episode of the first season of Freedom Dreams, our guests take on black liberation through land ownership and food sovereignty. Tepfirah Rushdan and Erin Bevel talk about co-founding the Detroit Black Farmer Land...

In our penultimate episode of the season, we’re talking about radical solutions in health care. We look at the historical example of the 1970 Lincoln Hospital Takeover in the Bronx with former Black Panther and Young Lord Cleo Silvers. Casey also goes down the history rabbit hole discussing their MA thesis. We also sit down with Fiyah Angel and Rachel Thompson from the Radical Well-Being Center in...

In this episode, we explore the building blocks of community safety—namely knowing your community and working together to keep each other safe. We talk to Sirrita Darby, and Bri and Kris, two youth organizers with Detroit Heals Detroit about the work they do to host healing circles for youth in Detroit, and the importance of collective healing. We also sat down with Curtis Renee, a powerful organi...

In this episode, we explore place-based education (PBE)—the pedagogy behind it, and how it works in practice. We talk to Ethan Lowenstein , Director of the SE Michigan Stewardship Coalition about the impact being rooted in place can have on a child's education. We also speak to Julia Putnam, Amanda Rosman, and Marisol Teachworth of The James and Grace Lee Boggs School , a K-8 school on Detroit's e...

In this episode, we dig into participatory budgeting with Shari Davis, Co-Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project to better understand how an expansion of the democratic process can benefit communities. We also speak with Angelica Chazaro, an organizer with Decriminalize Seattle to discuss Seattle's movement to defund police, as well as PG Watkins, Director of Detroit's Black Bot...

In this episode we speak to DJC staff attorney Whitley Granberry and Jerry Hebron who runs Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in Detroit’s North End. Our guests deliver a powerful summary of what cooperative economics are, and how they serve to shore up equity for future generations. We’ll also talk to Jerry about ancestral recipes and how her farm's delicious Afro-Jam came about.   TRANSCRIPT To lear...

In this episode, we speak to Marilyn Winn and Xochitl Bervera, two lead organizers in the fight to close the Atlanta City Jail. Our guests lead us through the fight to get laws stricken from the books, ensuring that the jails population would dwindle or “starving the beast” as they call it. Learn more about their campaign and about the Center for Wellness and Freedom, the community wellness hub th...

Welcome to Freedom Dreams! The show that explores   the many paths to building a truly just future for everyone. Centered in abolitionist thinking, this podcast, produced by the Detroit Justice Center , expands beyond the realm of criminal justice into conversations around what we could be building and prioritizing instead of punishment and further harm to make our communities genuinely safe....