Study Group

“To fulfill her task of building organizations and a broader movement, the conscious organizer must be guided in her work by her answers to basic questions: What’s the nature of the system? What are the current conditions within this system? And who are the forces that have the interest and the capability to make change?”      

​– Towards Land, Work, & Power


The aim of our study groups are to support our community in gaining/deepening critical and intersectional understandings of the prison industrial complex and prison abolition frameworks, especially as they relate to queer/trans identities and to build analysis together with those in leadership roles within our chapter (or those who may transition into leadership).

We had the first round of this study group in November 2013 with “free world” folks who responded to promotion of the group through email, word of mouth, and social media. We then met about once every 4-6 weeks on a weekend afternoon in rotating locations. We alternated leadership each month in order to collectively create a structure of readings, films, lectures, etc that we wanted to use for our discussions.

The second round started in November 2014, and was also composed only of “free world” members, though the readings were chosen by FOW leadership, and meetings were facilitated by us as well.

The third round of our “Queer/Trans Prison Abolition Study Group” occurred in 2015/2016 and was quite different from the past two because instead of having only “free world” folks involved, we included both incarcerated and “free world” folks who discussed the readings with us through penpal letters. We have just completed the 4th round of our study group, which was also an Inside/Outside study group.

​Here’s how we laid out the logistics for our Inside/Outside study groups:
  • 10-12 incarcerated (inside) folks are each paired with 10-12 “free world” (outside) folks.
  • We send out 2-5 readings at a time to both our inside and outside members. We aim for the readings to be varied in style – some are formal articles or excerpts of book chapters, others are parts of graphic novels or mixed media/art. Our intention is to maximize reading accessibility for differing levels of education and learning style. All members have input and can suggest readings.
  • We ask our inside members to send a letter back with their response to the readings: comments, questions, artwork, etc. Outside members do the readings between meetings and bring thoughts, questions and reflections to the meeting. Each inside person’s letter gets read aloud during the meeting by their outside partner.
  • Outside folks discuss the readings and integrate the perspectives from the inside letters. At the end of each meeting, outside participants will write a short letter back to their inside study buddy.
  • We audio record this discussion. After the meeting, the recording is transcribed by a local transcriber who is in our community, or possibly by a formerly incarcerated person who does transcription, if we are able to find someone. Any content that might get labeled as a Security Threat will be edited out to increase safety of our incarcerated members.
  • We send the next packet back to the folks inside which includes: the transcribed discussion, integrating everyone else’s letters from the inside, the next month’s reading, and a personalized note from the partner with whom they are matched.​

To increase access and transparency, we also publish our readings here so that outside folks who cannot directly participate can still follow along. Some of the readings are public, some we have scanned or gotten from private sources. If you want to read something that doesn’t have a link, email us and we can likely send it to you.
Round #4 – 2020 Inside/Outside Queer/Trans Prison Abolition Bay Area Study Group Monthly Themes & Readings 

​June 2020 / Envisioning Alternatives and Abolition 
April 2020 / Queer & Trans Intersections with the PIC and Abolition
​February 2020 / History & Background
Round #3 – 2015/2016 Inside/Outside Queer/Trans Prison Abolition Bay Area Study Group Monthly Themes & Readings 
​
January 2016 / Alternatives and Abolition
November 2015 / Solitary/Isolation/Queer & Trans Survival
September 2015 / History & Background
Round #2 – 2014/2015 Queer/Trans Prison Abolition Bay Area Study Group Monthly Themes & Readings

May 2015 / We combined two sections into one meeting: Moving forward pt 1 – Strategic Challenges aka our transformative demands and Moving forward pt 2 – Where can we build Tactical Campaigns
March 2015 / Dilemmas & Contradictions
January 2015 / Identifying the Conditions pt 2

November 2014 / Identifying the Conditions pt 1

September 2014 / Envisioning Abolition
Round #1 – 2013/2014 Queer/Trans Prison Abolition Bay Area Study Group Monthly Themes & Readings

May 2014 / Religion, Queerness & Criminalization
April 2014 / Queering Immigration​
March 2014 / Queer Criminality & Gendered Captivity

January 2014 / Queer Youth Criminalization & the School-to-Prison Pipeline
December 2013 / Abolition dreams
  • Building an Abolitionist Trans & Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got – Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee, and Dean Spade (from Captive Genders)
  • Maroon Abolitionists: Black Gender-Oppressed Activists in the Anti-Prison Movement in the US and Canada – Julia Sudbiry aka Julia C. Oparah (from Captive Genders)
  • Abolitionist Imaginings: A conversation with Bo Borwn, Greina Gossett, and Dylan Rodriguez – Che Gossett (from Captive Genders)

November 2013 / Opening
  • A short article by Rachel Herzing of Critical Resistance entitled, What is the Prison Industrial Complex to kick off our first conversation and help inform our discussion about what readings / themes everyone would like to cover for the rest of the sessions.

Additional Readings

Prisons & Policing
  1. The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons, Colin Dayan
  2. Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You, ed Ryan Conrad
  3. Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex, Julia Sudbury
  4. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity, Loïc Wacquant
  5. Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy, ed Joy James
  6. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, Ruth Wilson Gilmore
  7. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Samuel R. Delany
  8. The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
  9. The Prison-Industrial Complex & the Global Economy

Immigration
  1. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

Women & LGBTQ
  1. We Deserve Better: A Report on Policing in New Orleans By and For Queer and Trans Youth of Color
  2. Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation, Beth E. Richie
  3. Breaking Women: Gender, Race, and the New Politics of Imprisonment, Jill A. McCorkel
  4. Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire, Lynne Haney
  5. A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars, Cristina Rathbone
  6. Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women by Victoria Law
  7. Women, Prisons & Change by BCRW
  8. Flow Charts from SRLP: Disproportionate Deportation, Disproportionate Incarceration, Disproportionate Poverty & Homelessness

Race & Law
  1. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, Victor M. Rios
  2. The Contract and Domination, Carole Pateman & Charles Mills
  3. Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor, Patricia J. Williams
  4. Aberrations In Black: Toward A Queer Of Color Critique, Roderick Ferguson

​Narratives:
  1. Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons, ed Ayelet Waldman, ed Robin Levi
  2. The New Abolitionists: (Neo)slave Narratives And Contemporary Prison Writings, ed by Joy James

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