Why Pop Culture and Abolition?

The Popaganda Podcast

In the first episode of Popaganda, Shannon Perez-Darby and Tashmica Torok make some pretty big confessions. Shannon has spent hundreds of hours watching the Kardashians and as if that’s not bad enough, Tashmica spent much of 2022 soothing herself by secretly watching The Cosby Show. They say they’re abolitionists but, do they even go here?

Listen in as they talk about how they discovered Transformative Justice (TJ) and where they see connections between the pop culture they love and the prison abolition work we all need to accomplish in order to remake the world into a more just place.

#QOTD

“I had a situation where I did something that hurt my partner deeply. In the course of repairing that, and of course, of attending that together, I also had this experience where I got to feel a true depth, really feel what it was to also be unconditionally loved to have this feeling of, oh, this person loves me. And there's actually nothing I could do that would make this person not care for me. And I can actually feel that through the course of having made a mistake, having done something that was hurtful to him, and having repaired it. From that repair, was also deep connection. Both were true. It was painfully miserable to harm him and it was also deeply connective to repair and then feel what it was to be in connection still after having done something that was harmful to him.”

- Shannon Perez-Darby

Pop Culture Homework

• Indiana Jones
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Lifetime TV
• The Color Purple
• The Women of Brewster Place
• Billie Holiday; Lady Sings the Blues
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• The Price Is Right
• Bill Cosby; The Cosby Show
• Chuck Norris; Walker Texas Ranger
• Full Metal Jacket
• Platoon
• The Basement
• The Walking Dead
• Kirk Cameron and Nicolas Cage; Left Behind Movies
• Jada Pinkett Smith and Jordyn Sparks; Red Table Talk
• Kim, Kylie, and Chloe Kardashian; The Kardashians

Sponsored by:

• The Firecracker Foundation
• Accountable Communities

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Content Warning: This podcast explores the intersections of transformative justice and pop culture. We will be talking in general about the existence of domestic sexual and state violence and our experiences with these forms of violence throughout the season, and in this episode in particular, we will be talking about these themes and our own survivorship. We will not be talking in high levels of detail about specific experiences of violence. We invite everyone to use this information to make choices about what is right for you.