E283 - Prison Planet w/ Jarrod Shanahan, Zhana Kurti (Part 1)

The Antifada

Sean KB and AP Andy

Music, Arts

4.2 • 970 Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jarrod and Zhana return to talk about their new book "Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City"! We look at how the liberal apparatus used identity politics and divert the abolitionist movement to expand incarceration, and check in how the De Blasio-era plan to closer rikers and replace it with four "community" "justice hubs" has fared under the anti-Woke era of the Adams administration.

Lastly, we talk about the the recent "Wildcat" CO strike in state prisons as a broader effort to roll back the reforms of the BLM and other anticarceral struggles, as a preview of the dark plans for expanded incarceration of the Trump 2.0

In part 2 of the episode we talk about the counter-revolutoinary history of Tren de Aragua and the Enemy Aliens Act of 1798. to hear it, support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada

BUY the book from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2454-skyscraper-jails

Adams on new Manhattan jail developments: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2025/01/18/rikers-manhattan-jail-contract

More info on MH jail redesign: https://newyorkyimby.com/2025/01/new-preliminary-renderings-revealed-for-manhattan-detention-center-at-124-125-white-street-in-chinatown-manhattan.html

Jarrod on upstate prison strike: https://truthout.org/articles/nys-prison-guard-strike-has-roots-in-decades-of-racialized-deindustrialization/

Aziz Rana on Consitutional Crisis: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/constitutional-collapse

Our early episode with Nadja Guyot from No New Jails: https://www.patreon.com/posts/ep-69-abolish-w-30401262

Song: Cock Sparrer - Out on an Island

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	All right, you know what that music means.
0:09.0	Jared has written another book about Rikers Islands.
0:15.4	And we are joined with probably the most frequent guests in the history of this show,
0:21.6	Jonna Curti, about their new book, Skyscraper Jails.
0:26.8	Thanks for being here. You too.
0:28.4	Welcome, guys. Welcome back.
0:31.4	Always a pleasure.
0:33.1	Thank you. So good to be here.
0:34.4	I feel like every time I come to New York City, it's so nice to come back home, visit family, and get on the Antifada.
0:43.2	Yeah. We were playing to all get together yesterday morning, but I have an illness. Unfortunately, we couldn't get together in person. We are all in New York. It's really sad that we have to do this online, but I don't want to
0:56.2	get you guys sick. And you're on your way to Philadelphia for the last night of your East Coast
1:02.3	tour for the book. But glad we could get you in to talk about the book and more broadly,
1:10.2	just the state of carousal society.
1:13.8	You know, it's really interesting to read this book, which is about the No New Jails
1:18.5	movement, which we covered really early on in the show.
1:21.8	We had you guys early on, and then we also had Nadia Gio, from No New Jails,
1:27.9	who you reference a lot in the book on episode 69 of the Antifada.
1:32.4	Oh, that was so long ago.
1:34.4	Yeah, and they were reporting from the height of the movement,
1:38.9	and so this is sort of the autopsy of it about, you know, the logic of de Blasio and the city saying,
1:49.1	we're going to close Rikers.
1:50.5	And the good news is we're closing Rikers.
	...

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