Through the Portal is a podcast from the Social Justice Portal Project, a national collaborative think tank hosted by the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois Chicago. Each month, grassroots activists and radical scholars will give voice to community struggles, national strategies and sustainable alternatives for the future. The guest speakers, who are also Portal Project participants, explore what it means to walk through the portal of the current moment by centering racial and social justice issues.

On this first episode, cohosts Damon Williams of AirGo and Teresa Córdova of UIC's Great Cities Institute talk about Abolition with organizer, law professor, and writer Dean Spade. Dean breaks down how his work connects with larger movements for abolition, the ways that the legal system disrupts social movements toward liberation, and how to wrestle with grief collectively in this painful time.

SHOW NOTESLearn more about the Portal Project: https://sjiportalproject.com/

PREA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Rape_Elimination_Act_of_2003

Black and Pink: https://www.blackandpink.org/

Oakland Power Projects: https://oaklandpowerprojects.org/

Young Lords and Lincoln Hospital: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK_ALMA1NMk