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

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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