2024 CONFERENCE
“Embodying Autonomy: Liberating the Physical Self”
Human rights begin within ourselves – within the very bodies we inhabit. Today, the politics of the body are at the forefront of discussions surrounding the liberation of marginalized communities. This moment prompts us to ponder:
To what extent should the state dictate our bodily choices?
What can liberation movements teach us about the profound significance and politics inherent to our bodies?
Our upcoming conference will delve into these questions, critically examining the concept of bodily autonomy in a post-Roe era. We'll go beyond a singular perspective, aiming to unravel the full spectrum of constraints on personal freedom and physical embodiment of self in today's world. The event will feature two keynote speakers, two thought-provoking panels, a hands-on workshop, enlightening site visits, and more. Join us for a captivating exploration of liberation and self determination on February 23-25, 2024.
Applications are now closed. Please stay tuned to our social media for more information about further opportunities to get involved with our 2024 conference!
Keynote 1, Emi Koyama: Abolition Democracy and Sex Work Decriminalization
(Friday, 7:00 pm — 8:30 pm)
In the last few years, sex workers and people in the sex trade endured government-led shutdowns of advertising and “bad date” checking websites diminishing safety and autonomy, expulsions from social media platforms and financial services, increased technology-based surveillance and abuse including facial recognition and deepfake, and exclusion from pandemic relief such as expanded unemployment insurance, remote work opportunities, or prioritized access to personal protective equipment or (when it became available) vaccines, forcing many to expose themselves to deadly virus. Even as people in the sex trade continue to resist these policies and technological developments through grass-roots organizing and mutual aid, Silicon Valley funders are entering state-level efforts to decriminalize sex work without much input from people actually experiencing policing, surveillance, and criminalization, pushing for a vision of decriminalizing sex work contrary to the interests or priorities of people in the sex trade. Speaker Emi Koyama is part of the movement of mostly BIPOC women, queer and trans people advocating for an abolition democracy approach to decriminalization, following W.E.B. duBois’ approach to Slavery abolition and Angela Davis’ approach to prison abolition. Koyama’s keynote will explore the nuances of these issues, centering the stories of those most affected.
Keynote 2, Da’Shaun Harrison: Desirability and/as Power: How Moral Panic Led Diet Culture and Food Apartheid to Becoming an Imperial Strategies
(Sunday, 3:30 pm — 5:00 pm)
Da'Shaun uses the current war on Palestine and Michelle Obama’s 2011 speech at the National League of Cities conference to talk about fascism, diet culture, and anti-fatness as essential components of world-making—by which Da'Shaun means antiblack—violence. They take the listener through from the 18th and 19th century-era diet reforms to contextualize the 20th and 21st century use of diet, exercise, and food apartheid as central to (western) military strategies.
Bio: Da’Shaun Harrison is a trans theorist and Southern-born and bred abolitionist in Atlanta, GA. Harrison is the award-winning author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. As an editor, movement media and narrative strategist, and writer, Harrison uses their extensive history as a community organizer to frame their political thought and cultural criticism.
Panel 1: Palestine
(Saturday, 9:30 am — 11:30 am)
Moderator:
Sama Ben Amer - Sama Ben Amer is a writer, wannabe designer, and student at Northwestern University studying journalism, creative writing, and design. She hopes to work at the intersection of these three fields to create more spaces for empathetic and authentic journalism after graduating. In school, she is involved with NUCHR, the Muslim-cultural Student Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, and A&O Productions.
Panelists:
Ahmad Jitan - Ahmad is a community organizer, poet, and educator based in the South Side of Chicago. He is currently the Director of Organizing and Advocacy at Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) where he leads efforts around food sovereignty, health equity, police accountability, and youth leadership development. An immigrant to the United States from a young age, he was raised predominantly in the U.S. South, whose culture of resistance and resilience he carries with him to this day. For Ahmad, the process of seeking justice is as much a spiritual practice and a healing practice as it is a political one. It is these shared practices and the transformative relationships that arise from them that motivate Ahmad to continue the fight for a better world.
Rania Salem - Born and raised in Chicago, Rania is a Palestinian woman from Dheisheh refugee camp in Palestine. Her family is originally from a village called Jrash that was ethnically cleansed in 1948; then her family was internally displaced to Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem. Rania is an active poet, a program coordinator with the IL Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee rights, and a community organizer with the U.S Palestinian Community Network.
Ridaa Elaydi - Fidaa is a Palestinian-American attorney practicing immigration law. Her office is located in Chicago’s Little Palestine. Fidaa comes from a refugee family displaced from the Naqab and Yaffa to Maghazi camp in the Gaza Strip. She spent time before and during law school working with Palestinian human rights NGOs in Gaza.
Panel 2: Incarceration and Violence
(Sunday, 10:00 am — 12:00 pm)
Moderator:
Sino Esthappan - Sino is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University and is currently instructing the department’s Race, Punishment, and Institutional Change seminar (SOC392). His ongoing dissertation project is a mixed methods study of pretrial risk assessment technologies and the uses of discretionary punishment in US criminal courts. Sino is the research director of the Illinois Public Defense Study and serves as a graduate research assistant at the American Bar Foundation. He previously worked as a research analyst and assistant in the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, supporting policy and program evaluation studies of criminal legal system reform initiatives across the US.
Panelists:
Brandon Perkins - After six and a half years in pre-trial detention at the Cook County Jail, and a year and a half in IDOC Brandon was released on October 17, 2023, and is continuing his education on the Evanston campus as part of the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP). During his incarceration, he has developed a deep love for education and began to question the intergenerational effects of incarceration, as his father was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison when Brandon was 16 years old.
Jennifer Lackey - Jennifer is the Founding Director of the Northwestern Prison Education Program, the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law (courtesy) at Northwestern University, and Senior Research Associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science at the University of Johannesburg. Lackey’s research is primarily in social epistemology with a current focus on issues involving epistemic reparations, as well as extracted testimony and credibility assessments within the American criminal legal system. She is the author of three books, including her recent Criminal Testimonial Injustice, and over 60 articles. She is also the editor of five volumes and editor-in-chief of two major journals in philosophy, Philosophical Studies and Episteme. Lackey is the winner of the 2023 Horace Mann Medal, which is given annually to a Brown University Graduate School alumnus or alumna who has made significant contributions in his or her field, and the Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution. She served as President of the American Philosophical Association’s Central Division from 2021–2022 and has received grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Renaldo Hudson - Renaldo (he/him) is an educator, minister, and community organizer—and he focuses his work on decarceration in the state of Illinois. This work is especially important in the emerging adult justice space, because Renaldo was arrested at the age of 19 and has personally seen the impact of this work not being done. After being sentenced to death row, Hudson worked for 37 years while incarcerated in the Illinois Department of Corrections, where he became a leader, educator. Hudson developed and implemented groundbreaking programs inside the Department of Corrections, including the prison newspaper Stateville Speaks and the Building Block Program, a transformational program run by incarcerated people within the Illinois Department of Corrections. Hudson's work and life have been featured in such media outlets as the BBC, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, and others. Renaldo sits on the board of JHA/Real Youth Initiative board as well as the board for Clinard Dance. He is a CUE fellow alumnus and held the UChicago fellowship as the artist of the people. He was also on the subcommittee for public safety for Mayor Johnson. Additionally, he is one of the co-anchors for the decarceration team for Justice 2020 and Restorative Justice Practitioner, who believe in the power of Circle Healing and the importance of community engagement. His story and work to create back-end mechanisms for the release of incarcerated people is the subject of the documentary Stateville Calling. He was released from prison in September 2020 when Governor Pritzker commuted his life sentence, and he joined IPP as its Director of Education later that year.
Collette Payne - Colette Payne is an organizer, leader, student, mother, and grandmother. Her passion is to educate families to build healthier communities. From 2014 – 2017, Colette was the Coordinator of the Visible Voices program for CLAIM (Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers), a Program of Cabrini Green Legal Aid. Currently, she serves as the Director of the Reclamation Project for the Women’s Justice Institute. In her role, she helps engage women directly impacted by the criminal legal system to become agents of change and to create solutions to end the incarceration of women and girls. She frequently speaks at community events on topics ranging from the reunification of children and mothers, reproductive justice, mental health care, the need for increased programming in prison, and barriers to employment for people with criminal records. In 2015, Colette joined the delegation to assess women’s prisons in Illinois, becoming the first formerly incarcerated woman to serve in this role in the entire United States. Colette has appeared on television and spoken at conferences, churches, and universities, and testified before legislative committees. Colette has received numerous awards for her work, including Claim’s JoAnn Archibald Award (2013), Jane Adams Center for Social Policy and Research, Community Leadership Award (2015) and the Safer Foundation’s Carre Visionary Award (2018). Most recently, Colette was a recipient of the Chicago Foundation for Women 2020 Impact Award for her dedication to improving the lives of women and girls in the Chicago area.