Liat Ben-Moshe on Community beyond the Carceral State

Movements organized around disability justice, prison and police abolition, queer and trans feminism, and economic justice have long shown how intersecting systems of oppression require intersectional frameworks for resistance.

On episode 134 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Liat Ben-Moshe, who has spent her career tracing what she calls carceral ableism, or the ways the prison industrial complex and anti-disability logics shape one another in our daily lives and our political institutions.

Liat’s research and activism illustrate the vital need to foreground disability justice in our efforts to end violence. Liat points out that this kind of work produces a richer and more critical understanding of interdependency, one that neither romanticizes community nor enshrines individualism.

In the conversation, Cathy and Liat discuss how community building and mutual aid have shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic and what that means for a post-pandemic future. They also discuss why learning to see one’s identities as political rather than descriptive is so crucial for movement building and why creating a world beyond containment, confinement, and segregation is how Liat imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/134-liat-ben-moshe