Ep. 98 - Coalition-building & Water Solidarity ft. Avalon Betts-Gatson & Tommy Hagan

Bourbon 'n BrownTown

BrownTown talks water access, water solidarity, and abolition as presence with Avalon Betts-Gatson and Tommy Hagan, organizers with the Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois (CDI). From indigenous land back struggles to fighting for clean drinking water for incarcerated peoples, water is the most basic human right. The gang gets meta discussing organizing strategies within coalitions of various ideologies, access points to abolition, and the role of prisons and carceral logics in current campaigns, recent events, and everyday life. Originally recorded September 11, 2023.

Full Transcription Here!

GUESTS
Avalon Betts-Gaston is a Chicago native, non-licensed attorney, ordained minister, and passionate advocate to dismantle, change and build a legal system focused on humane justice and harm reduction, not just punishment. Avalon made her public debut as an advocate at a young age when she convinced her fellow Congressional pages to protest apartheid outside of the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. This passion against various societal injustices continued throughout her life and was super-charged and focused on the criminal legal system after she was wrongfully convicted in 2015. She is the first known formerly incarcerated Board Chairperson for Community Renewal Society, and is also on the FreeHer Campaign Advisory Council, a board member of Chicago Votes, a 2022 JLUSA Leading with Conviction Fellow, and is currently the Project Manager at the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice.

Tommy Hagan is the Co-Director of the REAL Youth Initiative. He has spent the last 8 years working to build power with currently incarcerated people in the United States. As a student at the University of Chicago, he helped launch the Bridge Writing Workshop, a weekly creative writing workshop at Cook County Jail. Tommy also participated in and co-wrote a published report on Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center’s Reimagining Youth Justice Project. From this report, Tommy helped launch the Final 5 Campaign - a coalition fighting to close the 5 remaining youth prisons in Illinois. Part of the Irish diaspora, Tommy is dedicated to ending practices of settler colonialism, imperialism, and military occupation.

Learn more about CDI on their site and their SoapBox page; follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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Mentioned in episode:

• #StopCopCity RICO charges & #NoCopAcademy
• The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore - racism definition & "Abolition Geography"
• Bella BAHHS' January 6th article (TRiiBE)
• Dylan Rodríguez on Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
• “We can’t have #LandBack without #WaterBack” --Pueblo Action Alliance’s #WaterBack campaign
• Water access struggles (US): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• Water access struggles (Internat'l): Honduras, Palestine, Bangladesh

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CREDITS: Intro from the SoapBox-produced Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois press conference video on April 21, 2022. Outro song Wavy by Tobe Nwigwe. Audio engineered by Kiera Battles.

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