EP #289 - 06.14.2021 - Prisons and the Pandemic w/ Guest Host Felicia Henry

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 289th episode of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Felicia Henry, I am a PhD Student in the Department of Sociology and Criminal justice at the University of Delaware.  I’m coming to you live from Wilmington, Delaware.

For the next three Mondays of June, I will be your guest host! Exactly one year ago, Scott invited me to be a guest on the podcast to discuss disaster research, race, emergency management, and vulnerable communities. On that episode, I talked about the importance of redefining concepts like vulnerability and expanding how we understood the social construction of disasters. As a guest host, I’d like to continue that discussion by inviting guests to talk about structural violence, incarceration , and environmental injustice, incorporating my own background as a scholar-activist. One year after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, calls for racial and economic justice still resound across the country. It is my hope that we amplify these calls through these next few episodes.

Today I welcome Dr. Dan Berger, Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at University of Washington Bothell. He is the author or editor of several books, including Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era, which won the 2015 James Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, and Rethinking the American Prison Movement, coauthored with Toussaint Losier. His most recent book is Remaking Radicalism: A Grassroots Documentary Reader of the United States, 1973-2001, coedited with Emily Hobson. Berger curates the Washington Prison History Project, an online archive of prison policy and organizing in Washington state, and has contributed articles to The Appeal, Black Perspectives, Boston Review, and Truthout, among elsewhere.