Rad! Looking forward to reading #EricKing’s book after listening to him talk at #SeattleAnarchistBookFair and be interviewed for the press tour.

https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1872

The #FreedomForFelons podcast interview released today is a standout for being about to talk about aspects of prison life with a level of immediate mutual intelligibility that is impossible without lived experience. The reminder of the “Rattling the Cages” oral histories King edited with #JoshDavidson was good to have, and would make a good next read, but like King and the hosts were saying, people who haven’t lived it find it hard to believe that prisoners talking about personal and systemic abuse by guards is real. “Rikers: An Oral History” by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau was comprehensive and beyond persuasive, but a huge part of that was guards also admitting it.

With #Anark on YouTube, King also spoke to the realities of how you hold onto your principles amid systems that don’t give you agency for ideological purity (e.g. being forced at higher security prisons to only associate within-race, therefore with white supremacists) or what battles you fight for your principles (e.g. veganism). The conversation on what prisoner support really looks like and how letter writing should not be viewed as charity but mutual exchange between people was also really insightful, esp. “send me the books I like to read, not the ones you think I should read”. That wasn’t primarily a lesson on anarchism but worth remembering: even people who are in the most vulnerable circumstances deserve better than you thinking you know what’s best for them rather than themselves.

And the #SeekingWitchcraft podcast was a really good conversation on many of those same things but with the added focus on what following a personal, non-Christian and specifically pagan practice looks like inside a culturally Christian institution meant to dominate and destroy your body and spirit.

Again, have not yet read the book itself, but really excited to, based on all these things so far.

Last, @pmpress sends a whole bunch of little treats to go along with their orders! Which was a nice surprise.