The first event in our Black August programming examined the centrality of disability justice to the prison abolitionist struggle. The occasion for the August 6 panel was our guest speaker, disability justice activist and author Katie Tastrom, and her new book, A People’s Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice (PM Press, 2023).
Instead of a standard author lecture followed by panelist responses, our people’s panel brought together a diverse group of organizers, artists, and educators who, in various ways, work to liberate our people from incarceration and ableism. Together, the panelists and audience were united in the efforts to create a new world, one free of cages and disabling structures.
Watch “A people’s panel”
About the panelists
Katie Tastrom is a disability justice activist and writer who has worked as a lawyer, social worker, and sex worker. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution and Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid, as well as all over the internet including: Truthout, Rewire, and Rooted in Rights. She resides in Syracuse, NY.
Riley Seungyoon Park is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Indianapolis. Park has been organizing with the Party for Socialism and Liberation since 2019 and volunteering with the
Indianapolis Liberation Center since 2021. As part of their activity in the international Korean movement for the reunification and national liberation of their homeland, they co-edited Socialist Education in Korea: Selected Writings of Kim Il-Sung (Iskra Books, 2023) and have published other writings on Korea for the Hampton Institute.
Sarah Pfohl is a dis/abled, chronically ill artist and teacher. She makes work about the value, power, and complexity of: a rural New York hill, the disabled body, and classroom teaching. Sarah serves as Associate Professor of Photography and Art Education Coordinator in the Department of Art & Design at the University of Indianapolis.
Jok Huerta is an organizer with FOCUS Initiatives LTD., an abolitionist prison re-entry program. After approximately 14 years of incarceration off and on in facilities across the country, Jok emerged from this dark period of his life with a new sense of purpose and direction. He completely immersed himself in the movement and supports FOCUS with housing, resources, information, and encouragement. Jok is also a leading member of the Pendleton 2 Defense Committee and the co-director, co-producer, and co-writer of the award-winning documentary, The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up.
Elizabeth Nelson is a historian and an assistant professor in the Medical Humanities and Health Studies program at IU Indianapolis. Her research focuses on institutions of confinement, such as mental hospitals, homes for the disabled, and prisons, and their impact on the people who live in them. With Michelle Daniel Jones she co-edited Who Would Believe a Prisoner?: Indiana Women’s Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920, which was written by ten currently and formerly incarcerated women and published by the New Press in 2023.
Stephen Lane, who introduced the panel, is the Community Outreach Coordinator of the Indianapolis Liberation Center, a member of the Steering Committee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation – Indianapolis, and treasurer of the Indiana Black Librarians Network.
If you find these and other resources available, please donate to or sustain your city’s liberated community organizing center!
Featured photo: Panelists at the Center. Credit: Indianapolis Liberation Center.
