A conversation with Joshua Dubler (University of Rochester), Vincent Lloyd (Villanova University), Rev. Lynice Pinkard, and Kempis “Ghani” Songster (activist, founder of The Redemption Project). Moderated by Kendall Thomas (Columbia Law)
Changes in the American religious landscape enabled the rise of mass incarceration. Religious ideas and practices also offer a key for ending mass incarceration. Activists-scholars Joshua Dubler and Vincent Lloyd advance these bold claims in their new book Break Every Yoke, which weaves religion into the stories about race, politics, and economics that conventionally account for America's grotesque prison expansion of the last half century. By foregrounding the role of religion in the way political elites, religious institutions, and incarcerated activists talk about incarceration, Break Every Yoke is an effort to stretch the American moral imagination and contribute resources toward envisioning alternative ways of doing justice.
Dubler and Lloyd will join us to discuss their work in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing protests. They will be in conversation with pastor, writer, and activist Lynice Pinkard, and Kempis “Ghani” Songster, a former juvenile lifer and founder of the advocacy group The Redemption Project.
View event recording.
This event is organized by the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life and cosponsored by Columbia Religious Life.
Joshua Dubler is an associate professor of religion at the University of Rochester where he directs the Rochester Education Justice Initiative, which fosters higher educational opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in western New York. In addition to Break Every Yoke, he is author of Down in the Chapel: Religion Life in an American Prison (FSG, 2013).
Vincent Lloyd is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, where he also directs the Africana Studies Program. His books include Black Natural Law, Religion of the Field Negro, the co-edited Race and Secularism in America, and the forthcoming Black Dignity: A Philosophy. Lloyd also co-edits the journal Political Theology. He lives in Philadelphia.
Rev. Lynice Pinkard is a pastor, teacher, writer, activist, singer and healer. Her work is dedicated to decolonizing the human spirit and to freeing people from what she calls "empire affective disorder." Rev. Lynice recently moved from Oakland, CA, and now lives with her partner in Efland, NC.
Kempis “Ghani” Songster is a co-founder and director of Ubuntu Philadelphia. He is a founding member of Right 2 Redemption, the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration, and a co-founder of the original Redemption Project. He has spent over 30 years in prison on a death by incarceration sentence, which began when he was 15 years old. Since his release in December of 2017, Ghani has been the Healing Justice Organizer with the Amistad Law Project, a grassroots abolitionist and public interest law center and organizing project in Philadelphia. He is also the host of ALP’s new monthly podcast Move It Forward. He is excited to step into his newest role as restorative justice diversion facilitator with the Youth Art and Self-Empowerment Project (YASP). However, his most important roles are as husband, and father to his 1 1/2-year-old son Karume.
Kendall Thomas is a scholar of comparative constitutional law and human rights whose teaching and research focus on critical race theory, intersectionality, legal philosophy, feminist legal theory, and law and sexuality. Thomas is the co-founder and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School, and a founder of Amend the 13th, a movement to amend the U.S. Constitution to end enforced prison labor. His seminal writing on the intersection of race and law appears in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Founded the Movement (1996), which he co-edited. He is also a co-editor of Legge Razza Diritti: La Critical Race Theory negli Stati Uniti (2005) and What's Left of Theory? (2000).