Ending family policing: lessons from resistance in the US and Victoria

Erica will speak to family policing systems and lessons from activist movements in the US, and Sissy and Auntie Rieo will reflect on challenges and opportunities for resistance in Victoria.

This is a free event, but we welcome and encourage attendees to donate funds to Grandmothers Against Removals Victoria (GMAR) on the day.

This event will be held on unceded Wurundjeri land.

This event will be held in-person, but an audio recording of discussions will be made. The venue (La Trobe City Campus, Level 2 360 Collins St, Melbourne) is accessible by lift and public transport via Swanston Street trams. There are all-gender toilets at the venue. Please contact tully.oneill@latrobe.edu.au if you have any questions about the event or accessibility needs.

About Erica

Writer, educator and organizer, Erica R. Meiners’ current books include For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State (University of Minnesota 2016), a co-edited anthology The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Towards Freedom (Haymarket Press 2018); the co-authored Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence (Verso 2020); and the co-authored Abolition. Feminism. Now. (Haymarket 2022).

A Distinguished Visiting Scholar at a range of universities and centers - including Humboldt University, Trent University, CUNY Graduate Center, the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, and Chicago’s Leather Archives and Museum, Erica has published articles in a wide range of publications including In These Times, Social Text, Radical Teacher, Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Advocate, Boston Review.

Their work has been recognized by awards including the 2015 Henry Trueba Award from the American Education Research Association, a 2016 Soros Justice Fellowship, and other support from the Illinois Humanities Council, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and US Department of Education. The Bernard J. Brommel Distinguished Research Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, Erica is a member of her labor union, University Professionals of Illinois, and Erica teaches classes in education, gender and sexuality studies, and justice studies.

Most importantly, Erica has collaboratively started and works alongside others in a range of ongoing mobilizations for liberation, particularly movements that involve access to free public education for all, including people during and after incarceration, and other queer abolitionist struggles. A member of Critical Resistance, the Illinois Death in Custody Project, the Prison+Neighborhood Arts / Education Project, and the Education for Liberation Network, Erica is a sci-fi fan, an avid runner, and a lover of bees and cats.