On episode 39 of the Activist Files, Center for Constitutional Rights Bertha Justice Fellow Rafaela Uribe talks with Heena Sharma and Katrina Hamann-Azanov, two members of the Free Ashley Campaign, about their work to support Black trans liberation and prisoners’ rights activist Ashley Diamond while she is incarcerated in a men’s prison in Georgia. They discuss why it’s important to organize support campaigns for people in prison and how to get involved, how their support work connects to their position as abolitionists, and how Ashley’s experience offers an important case study for the particular issues faced by trans people both in prisons and through the discrimination-to-incarceration pipeline that criminalizes and punishes trans people for their survival. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center represent Ashley in her legal case, while the Free Ashley Campaign works with Ashley to provide her with support to meet her material needs, advocates for her safety and her release, and organizes events and actions to mobilize the large community of supporters that Ashley has on the outside.

Resources:

Free Ashley Campaign: https://www.freeashleydiamond.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/freeashley_now/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/freeashley_now/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freeashleynow/

Survived & Punished: https://survivedandpunished.org (national)
https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org (NY)

Guide to Organizing Survivor Defense Campaigns: https://survivedandpunished.org/defense-campaign-toolkit/

Mariame Kaba: http://mariamekaba.com/

Ky Peterson: https://www.freedomoverground.org/ky/
https://linktr.ee/KyPeterson

Ruth Wilson Gilmore: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/magazine/prison-abolition-ruth-wilson-gilmore.html
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-makes-the-case-for-abolition/