Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York. It is about 30 miles (48 km) north of New York City on the east bank of the Hudson River. It holds about 1,700 inmates and housed the execution chamber for the State of New York until the abolition of capital punishment in New York in 1977.
Miguel Piñero was a Puerto Rican born American playwright, actor and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was a leading member of the Nuyorican literary movement.
The School of General Studies, Columbia University (GS) is a liberal arts college and one of the undergraduate colleges of Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights, New York City. GS is known primarily for its traditional B.A. program for non-traditional students. GS students make up almost 30% of the Columbia undergraduate population.
Rikers Island is a 413-acre (167.14-hectare) prison island in the East River in the Bronx that contains New York City's largest jail.
The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, is one of the 12 schools within the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) located in Los Angeles, California. Its creation was groundbreaking in that it was the first time a leading university had combined the study of theater, filmmaking and television production into a single administration.
Renee Tajima-Peña is an American filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant communities, race, gender and social justice. Her directing and producing credits include the documentaries Who Killed Vincent Chin?, No Más Bebés, My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, Calavera Highway, Skate Manzanar, Labor Women and the 5-part docuseries Asian Americans.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people face difficulties in prison such as increased vulnerability to sexual assault, other kinds of violence, and trouble accessing necessary medical care. While much of the available data on LGBTQ inmates comes from the United States, Amnesty International maintains records of known incidents internationally in which LGBTQ prisoners and those perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender have suffered torture, ill-treatment and violence at the hands of fellow inmates as well as prison officials.
Robert Akira Nakamura is a filmmaker and teacher, sometimes referred to as "the Godfather of Asian American media." In 1970 he cofounded Visual Communications (VC) the oldest community-based Asian Pacific American media arts organization in the United States.
Solly Granatstein is an American television producer and director, formerly with CBS 60 Minutes, NBC News and ABC News. He is co-creator, along with Lucian Read and Richard Rowley, of "America Divided", a documentary series about inequality, and was co-executive producer of Years of Living Dangerously Season 1. He is the winner of twelve Emmys, a Peabody, a duPont, two Polks, four Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, including the IRE medal, and virtually every other major award in broadcast journalism. He is also the screenwriter, with Vince Beiser, of The Great Antonio, an upcoming film, developed by Steven Soderbergh and Warner Brothers.
Jon-Adrian Velazquez also known as "JJ" Velazquez, is an American criminal legal reform activist who was wrongfully convicted of a 1998 murder of a retired police officer. He was serving a 25 years to life sentence at maximum security Sing-Sing prison in New York. His case garnered considerable attention from the media ten years after his conviction, due to a long-term investigation by Dateline NBC producer Dan Slepian and celebrity support from actor Martin Sheen actress Alfre Woodard music executive Jason Flom and entertainment company Roc Nation.
The Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players and the related Bard Press has published both established and emerging poets. The literary magazine, Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, has been in continuous publication since 1979. For thirty years, Waterways and Ten Penny Players worked with special needs and incarcerated children in New York City schools.
Victoria Law, familiarly known as Vikki Law, is an American anarchist activist, prison abolitionist, writer, freelance editor, and photographer. Her books are Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, and Prisons Make Us Safer: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration (2021).
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a prison abolitionist and prison scholar. She is the Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and professor of geography in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has been credited with "more or less single-handedly" inventing carceral geography, the "study of the interrelationships across space, institutions and political economy that shape and define modern incarceration". She received the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Geographers.
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about inequities within the U.S. criminal justice system. The Marshall Project has been described as an advocacy group by some, and works to impact the system through journalism.
Glenn E. Martin is the president and founder of GEMtrainers.com, a social justice consultancy firm that partners with non-profits from across the United States to assist with fundraising, organizational development and marketing. Glenn is a longstanding American criminal justice reform advocate and is the founder and former president of JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA). He also founded the campaign, #CLOSErikers and co-founded the Education from the Inside Out Coalition, a national campaign working to remove barriers to higher education facing students while they are in prison and once they are released.
Heather Ann Thompson is an American historian, author, activist, professor, and speaker from Detroit, Michigan. Thompson won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2016 Bancroft Prize, and other awards for her work Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.
Liza Jessie Peterson is a playwright, actor, activist, and educator. She is known for her one-woman show, The Peculiar Patriot and her appearances in Ava DuVernay's film 13th.
Carolyn Baxter is an African-American poet, playwright, and musician. Baxter is from Harlem, New York. She was a participant in the Black Panthers School Breakfast Program. Baxter was formerly incarcerated at the New York City Correctional Institute for Women at Rikers Island. Her writings are considered a part of the Prison Art's Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Morad Tahbaz is an Iranian-American businessman and conservationist. He was born in London and holds British citizenship. Tahbaz is a co-founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF). In January 2018, Iranian authorities arrested Tahbaz along with eight other PWHF-affiliated individuals.
Ashley Hunt is an American artist, activist, writer and educator, primarily known for his photographic and video works on the American prison system, mass incarceration and the prison abolition movement. He is currently a faculty member of the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts.
