How does one cultivate a culture of care within the incarceration system?

Mothers are the fastest growing demographic in the US prison system, and kids of imprisoned parents make up the fourth largest “school district” in the country. Hearing from those with personal experience attempting to mother in and after incarceration is a vital component of ending the violence that comes with incarcerating increasing numbers of mothers. In this conversation of care, panelists will share their personal experiences and consider the constraints, complexities and ingenuities they encountered with carceral motherhood. ASL interpretation is provided.

Dmitra Gideon (they/she/he) is a writer, educator, and a founding member of Pittsburgh Family Liberation, a collective focused on mutual aid, advocacy, and community care for youth and families targeted by carceral systems. They are the Director of Youth-Centered Programming and Community Collaboration with Write Pittsburgh. In addition to frolicking around behind the scenes at Write Pittsburgh, Dmitra facilitates workshops at Passages to Recovery and the Allegheny County Jail, and assists the Teen Council. Their writing has appeared in PANK Magazine, SFWP Quarterly, Trace Fossils Review, and new {words} press, among others.

Shanda Harris is a woman of color with 4 children that she raised in a low-to-moderate income community. Shanda is a concerned parent who has dealt with - and still deals with - being a mother of an incarcerated/formerly incarcerated child. She now advocates for all -- especially our youth/young adults that face mental health issues, gun violence, drug addiction and abandonment on a day to day basis -- which has led her to a journey in entrepreneurship. Shanda has started several businesses over twenty plus years. She's now a proud owner of Shirl The Pearls’ bar, restaurant, and hotel establishment. After much time spent running her operation, she decided to focus on new ideas, and became the Founder/President of a non-profit organization called Team G.R.O.W (Great Resources of Wisdom) 6 years ago, operating in the Hill District Community. Shanda has devoted herself to connecting with families in the community through an outreach of love, education, togetherness, and trust. Being a mother and seeing other mothers go through some, if not all, of the struggles she went through and still faces today, makes her work hard to reach families through Team G.R.O.W’s programming opportunities, which show others how to gain and keep skills that will help build self-esteem and self-sufficiency that will benefit them for a lifetime.

Terri Minor-Spencer is the Founder and President of West End P.O.W.E.R., a nonprofit organization committed to strengthening communities through activism, advocacy, education, equity, and promoting unity. Terri is a tireless advocate for her community, working closely with returning citizens to reform the Criminal Justice System, participating in job readiness programs, serving as a G.E.D. Instructor, and being an advocate for entrepreneurs. As a respected servant of the community Terri and her service to others have been prominently featured in Public Source, 90.5 WESA, NOBLE Magazine—the National Magazine of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers—and numerous other publications. In 2019 she was awarded the Pittsburgh Courier Women of Excellence Award and was a finalist for the Jefferson Awards, and in 2014 received a proclamation from the City of Pittsburgh declaring October 7th Terri Minor-Spencer Day for her Advocacy and Community Outreach Volunteerism. She is a graduate of the Emerge America Cohort and board member of the Abolitionist Law Center, among many other boards and committees that address gun violence, youth empowerment, and community advancement.

Sarah Shotland co-founded Words Without Walls, which brought creative writing programs to jails, prisons, and drug treatment facilities from 2009-2022. As program director, she facilitated writing groups with thousands of incarcerated artists and mentored over fifty teaching artists working with the program. She is the author of the novel Junkette (WG Press, 2014), and the participatory nonfiction publication Abolition is Everything (Antenna Press, 2021). Sarah’s work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and has been published in Ploughshares, Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is Assistant Professor of English at Carlow University, where she also serves as Program Director of Madwomen in the Attic.

This installment features the fierce team from the Critical Design Lab,  Jarah Moesch (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ), Cassandra Hartblay (University of Toronto), Aimi Hamraie (Vanderbilt University).

About the Guests:

Dr. Cassandra Hartblay is Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health & Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough and graduate faculty in the Department of Anthropology. They are an award-winning scholar of critical disability studies, with a global research focus on contemporary Russia. Their original documentary stage play, I WAS NEVER ALONE, was most recently performed in 2017 at Yale University, and in 2016 at UC San Diego’s Theatre District at La Jolla Playhouse (watch a short video about the project here). They have served as a member of the steering committee of the Disability Research Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association.

Aimi Hamraie (they/them) is Associate Professor of Medicine, Health, & Society and American Studies at Vanderbilt University, and director of the Critical Design Lab. Hamraie is the author of Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) and host of the Contra* podcast on disability and design. Hamraie’s research is funded by the Social Science Research Council, the Smithsonian Institution, the Mellon Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Arts, and the National Humanities Alliance. 

Jarah Moesch (MFA, PhD) is an artist-scholar whose work explores issues of justice through the design, production, and acquisition of embodied knowledges. Jarah’s research incorporates queer crip theory, cultural studies, art, and design practices to develop new models for justice and to imagine new worlds.Moesch’s artwork has been shown across the United States as well as internationally in festivals and exhibitions. Jarah holds an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, and a PhD in American Studies from University of Maryland.

Dr. Harrison Apple is an oral historian and archivist who began the Pittsburgh Queer History Project after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University. They received their PhD in Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona. Their work examines local histories of voluntary associations and ‘drinking clubs’ as the context for the Pittsburgh Queer History Project’s archives. Their work asks why these materials come together as a community archives, beyond their relationship to sexual identity, working with the overlapping meanings of “membership” that circulate in the PQHP’s records.

Suzy González is an artist, curator, writer, and zinester based in Yanaguana, aka San Antonio, TX. She has had solo exhibits at Spellerberg Projects, Presa House Gallery, Hello Studio, Palo Alto College, and two-person exhibits at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi and the University of Connecticut. She recently completed murals with the City of Pasadena, San Antonio Museum of Art and Centro San Antonio. She has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center (VT), the Trelex Residency (Peru), The Wassaic Residency (NY), Starry Night Residency (NM), the Studios at MASS MoCA (MA), and Hello Studio (TX). Suzy publishes Xicana Vegan zine, co-organizes the San Anto Zine Fest, and is a part of Dos Mestizx and Breathe Collective. She is currently a Writer on the Creative Team of Veggie Mijas and an Art Consultant and Editor for Ofrenda Magazine. She is a 2018 alum of the NALAC Leadership Institute, a 2019 alum of the Intercultural Leadership Institute and NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program, and attended a 2021 training with The Center for Artistic Activism. Suzy holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Texas State University.

Katie Cercone Or Nah is an artist, scribe, priextexx and spiritual gangsta hailing from the blessed coast. Cercone has performed or shown work in exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum, Dallas Contemporary, Momenta Art, C24 Gallery, Changjiang Museum China, Dodge Gallery and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art. She has published critical writing in ART PAPERS, White Hot, Posture, Brooklyn Rail, Hysteria, Bitch Magazine, Utne Reader and N.Paradoxa. As co-leader of the radical, queer, transnational feminist collective Go! Push Pops, Cercone spearheaded a 400-women strong takeover of the Whitney Museum in 2014 known as “The Clitney Perennial,” and was awarded the Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice the same year. In 2015 she was a J.U.S.F.C. Fellow for the U.S.-Japan Exchange Program in Tokyo. Her work has been featured in Dazed, MILK, Interview, Japan Times, Huffington Post, ART 21, Hyperallergic, PAPER, Art Fag City, Washington Post, and Art Net TV among others. Cercone has curated shows for Momenta Art, KARST (UK), Cue Art Foundation, Local Project and NurtureArt. Cercone is adjunct faculty at the School of Visual Arts where she teaches GENDER TROUBLE in the Visual & Critical Studies Department. A pioneer of Hip Hop Yoga Katie was awarded the Franklin Furnace Award Fund in 2020.