"Free Them All:" Anti-Prison Organizing as Self-Recognition

Police violence and incarceration have become a salient feature in the social landscape of the South Side of Chicago. In response, a robust decarceral ecology of individuals, groups, and organizations mobilize and organize to free loved ones and neighbors from prisons, support their return, and create community based solutions to harm. Viewing 'politicized prisoners' as 'coalitional bridges' between mobilizations inside and anticarceral movements on the outside, this work examines the processes by which cultural resources and a repertoire of tactics creates the possibility of inside-outside organizing. Through ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviewing, supplemented by secondary data analysis, I examine the creation of self-narratives of politicized, formerly incarcerated men and women who delegitimize the discursive authority of the carceral state through 'resist'-ing, 'subvert'-ing, and disputing responsibilization.