Juneteenth Spotlight: The Final 5 Campaign
Harry Potter and the Sacred Text
Vanessa Zoltan, Casper ter Kuile & Ariana Nedelman
4.7 • 6.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2022
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year in commemoration of Juneteenth, we’re spotlighting The Final 5 Campaign, a coalition working to close the final five youth prisons in Illinois. We’re joined in conversation by one of their leaders, Alicia Brown, who tells us about what it means to be a prison abolitionist and her work with the campaign.
Please join us by making a donation, learning more about the failures of youth prisons, contacting your legislators about prisons in your state, and listening to their new podcast, Free The Youth.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, we are releasing a special episode today. |
| 0:05.0 | We want to use Juneteenth as an opportunity to discuss an issue that we are really passionate |
| 0:11.3 | about at Not Sorry and that is prison abolition. |
| 0:15.2 | The reason that we are discussing this on Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating emancipation |
| 0:20.5 | of enslaved African Americans, is because the United States Prison Industrial Complex |
| 0:26.0 | is one of the places in our society where it is most strikingly clear that America has |
| 0:31.3 | failed in its commitment to emancipation. |
| 0:34.7 | Black Americans make up 13% of our population, but they make up nearly 40% of our prison population. |
| 0:43.3 | Additionally, nearly half of people incarcerated in state prisons in 2015 were convicted of nonviolent |
| 0:51.2 | crimes. |
| 0:53.2 | In the Harry Potter books, we are in pretty regular conversation with the Wizard Justice |
| 0:58.0 | System. |
| 0:59.4 | We see past trials in current ones. |
| 1:02.4 | We watch political prisoners who are exploited due to their marginalized identities like Hagrid, |
| 1:09.8 | Get Incarcerated, and we watch innocent men like Sirius nearly given the death penalty. |
| 1:16.9 | This book, Prisoner of Azkaban, feels like the right book to pause and look closely at |
| 1:21.7 | our justice system. |
| 1:23.6 | In Juneteenth seems the perfect day for us at Not Sorry to pause and advocate for radical |
| 1:29.9 | prison reform. |
| 1:32.1 | As you all know, I have had a really hard time defining hope for myself, and the definition |
| 1:38.7 | that I have come to love is the belief that people in the world can change for the better. |
| 1:45.3 | This community has taught me that kind of hope, and so I invite you to gather around this |
... |
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