Activism
Events, Brazil, summer 2024
Closed workshop at AMPARAR, São Paulo, July 9, 2024
Care Not Cages: collective organizing to resist new jail construction in Monroe County (2022 – ongoing)
Website: Monroe County and Bloomington city government are planning the construction of a new, bigger jail.
News:
Indiana Daily Student: Commissioners set on building new jail despite public opposition
B Square Bulletin: Advisory committee on Monroe County jail hits rough road trying to find common ground
Kite Line episode: Care Not Cages
Oct 2023: Satire on the planned new jail facility was provided by Micol Seigel, in the guise of Judge Dame Geeky Fud. She told the council: “I pronounce you guilty of pretending to care, as a smokescreen for condescending condemnation of people disadvantaged by the consequences of political decisions you have made, hiding behind the specific hand wringing over the impossibility of real solutions.”
Kite Line Radio: co-founder and co-producer of radio show and podcast focused on local, national, and international prison issues
Selected episodes:
Transforming Trauma- Voices from Inside-Out
Blackness and Abolition in Brazil
A Slightly Bigger Cage – Jail Expansion for Monroe County
Redbud Books: Co-founder and collective member of a nonprofit community-curated bookstore and gathering space
De-Carcerate Monroe County: a local movement which successfully resisted the construction of a new jail 2008-2014
As ethnographized in Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion
Interview with Judah Schept on Progressive Punishment
WFIU News: “Decarcerate Protests Cap Expiration For Monroe County Jail”
Later expanded to a statewide organization: Decarcerate Indiana
Indiana Against E-Carceration: collective organizing inspired by Challenging E-Carceration
Kite Line Radio: Resistance to E-Carceration — In this interview, Seigel discusses the unforeseen complications, burdens, and tragedies produced by electronic monitoring – everything from prohibitive costs to users to to the punitive measures those users face when their monitoring devices malfunction.
Critical Prison Studies Caucus: co-founder of American Studies Association scholar network
The Critical Prison Studies Caucus is a network of American studies scholars who oppose the continued centrality of prisons and policing, and who share a commitment to challenging criminalization and punishment on local, national, and global scales. We advance a combination of critical research and practice that connects the production and sharing of knowledge on incarceration to concrete work for prison industrial complex abolition and radical democracy.
Critical Resistance: member, critical resistance LA (2003-2006) & organizer, Critical Resistance South Conference
Critical Resistance Los Angeles (CRLA) is the second oldest CR chapter. Since 2004, CRLA has worked successfully in different coalitions to stop jail construction in LA County and ensure that the County works to decriminalize, decarcerate, and build up life-sustaining community-based resources.
