Sunday, October 20, 2024 |  4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Making Worlds Bookstore
210 S. 45th St., Philadelphia, PA

Please join us for a conversation about political education in Pennsylvania’s prisons and about community, communication, and care between bars.

Since 2010, Address This! has been facilitating correspondence courses focusing on collective political education in PA prisons. In Address This! courses, participants’ responses are transcribed and sent back out to the cohort, creating a shared learning experience even for people held in the most restrictive conditions.

Address This! co-founders Saleem Holbrook and Emily Abendroth, along with early collaborators Felix Rosado and Iresha Picot, will talk about creating paths for collective learning and organizing on the inside.

Participant Bios

Robert Saleem Holbrook is the executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center, a law project dedicated to ending race and class based discrimination in the criminal justice system and all forms of state violence. He is a co-founder of the Human Rights Coalition (an organization with chapters in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that is composed of family members of prisoners) and the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration. He sits on the advisory boards of the Amistad Law Project and the Youth Art and Self-Empowerment Project.  In 2010, he and Emily Abendroth schemed, dreamed, and planned in order to launch the first pilot semester of Address This!, a project that they were both involved in for 10 years.

Emily Abendroth is a writer, teacher, and organizer who currently serves as the Program Manager for Philly Climate Works (a project  focused on advancing equity, justice, and resilience as the foundation of a safe climate future for Philadelphia). She has been involved in anti-prison organizing here in Philly for more than 20 years (through Decarcerate PA, Books Through Bars, LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty, and the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration). In 2010, she and Saleem Holbrook schemed, dreamed, and planned in order to launch the first pilot semester of Address This!, a project that they were both involved in for 10 years.

Felix Rosado is the Program Manager for Healing Futures at the Youth Arts Self-Empowerment Project. He teaches courses on Restorative Justice at Chestnut Hill College and is the author of Justice from the Inside Up — A Restorative Justice Education Facilitator’s Manual, which was just released this fall from Living Justice Press. He is a co-founder of Right to Redemption (R2R) and the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration. While incarcerated at Graterford prison, he co-created Let’s Circle Up (LCU) which seeks to build relationships, community, and leaders through experiential, participatory, and collaborative restorative justice education. Felix worked with Address This! to turn the Let’s Circle Up curriculum into a dynamic correspondence course focused on Restorative Justice that could be offered to individuals incarcerated across the state of Pennsylvania.

Iresha Picot is a licensed behavioral therapist, organizer, writer, and more. On social media she writes under the name, Iresha da hood therapist, and focuses a lot on mental health and wellness. In 2023, she started leading Black Girl Joy Bike Rides, a cycling group for Black women aimed at promoting joy, self-care and a sense of community. Iresha was a volunteer with Books Through Bars and Address This! for many years. During one of AT’s early semesters, she worked with other members of a Philly Reproductive Justice collective to develop a course on Reproductive Justice specifically aimed at incarcerated women in Pennsylvania.