Ian Partman /
Survived and Punished /
New York, USA /
This summer, I’ve had the pleasure of working with an amazing host organization to take on work that I take very seriously; work that is stalwart in its love for the people and community, that remains in struggle against the oppressive institutions that comprise the Prison-Industrial-Complex, and that begins primarily with the supposition that another world is possible. Though, I’ve struggled to know or generate a way of talking about my work in a way that doesn’t feel self-gratifying or self-centered, especially because so much of it traffics in active and constant collaboration with peers, volunteers, and other members of the organization. So I think that the best way to go about describing it is by way of an anecdote.
One thing that I internalized very early on in my summer project was that the line between practice and pedagogy should remain very, very thin. Put simply: if you preach it, you should also practice it. Those of us involved in activism against the Prison-Industrial-Complex know that the stakes are too high — and the margins of victory too slim — to sacrifice conviction for compromise. In general meetings with my host organization, when tasked with debating the merits or pitfalls of meeting requests for approval/endorsement of certain legislature or organizations, the first questions we asked ourselves were “how does this legislation/organization align with our ideological tenets?” and perhaps, more seriously: “how does the endorsement of said legislation/organization advance our ideological goal as an organization?” If the approval risked failing to meet the litmus of those two questions, it was denied and immediately shelved. In a world where the legitimacy of prisons and policing remains relatively unquestioned in federal and local-level policies, the risks of advancing towards goals with unproductive ends remains high.
I recognized this immediately when I began working on developing a comprehensive set of resources for the re-entry of our formerly incarcerated/newly decarcerated members in the state of New York. I quickly realized that in many parts of the state, resources for formerly incarcerated persons remained insufficient, non-existent, or, in the worst cases, seemingly aimed at deterring them from full re-entrance into society. Nevertheless, we had to make sense of the available resources, and figure out how to tactically employ them in productive ways. We also had to figure how we could best honor the work of community-based organizations to fill the gaps in the resources allocated by local-level governments. All of this was met with assuring we remained allegiant to the core tenet of our organization: that we are responsible for keeping each other safe. Put simply: I had to figure out how to practice what I preached. And just like that, a seemingly basic task became a lesson for a lifetime.