In this episode, we listen to a short story from Alexandrea Henry, reflecting on how carcerality is integrated not only in schools broadly, but even within the 1st grade classroom that she taught. Law & Disorder reached out to Alexandrea to request her contribution after seeing it first published in the recent pilot issue of the renewed Abolition Journal, produced by Philadelphia’s W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction, which is a political education organization for aspiring revolutionaries and movement leaders from those communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration.
Alexandrea Henry’s generously offered to share her Abolition Journal contribution, titled Relearning the Language of Care: Reflections on Disappearing a First Grader, with us at KPFA Radio. Alexandrea Henry is a current Stanford PhD student researching how our youngest learners make sense of power and belonging in the context of school discipline. She is also a former School District of Philadelphia elementary school teacher.
You can check out the full piece in written form, along with other contributions to the journal, at: abolitionjournal.com
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Jesse Strauss