A conference created by, created for, led by and driven by formerly incarcerated individuals

​Make Plans to Join Us - September 9 -10th 
12:00pm - 5:00pm EST
Register HERE: www.riseupconference.org
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Rise Up: Decolonizing Higher Education During and After Prison
 
September 9th, 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, during which hundreds of men incarcerated
at Attica banded together, after years of abuse, to take control of the facility until their demands were met. The men’s
demands were simple; better living conditions and opportunities to improve their lives. The same spirit and belief in the transformative power of positive programming can be found in people pursuing higher education while incarcerated today.
Directly impacted practitioners offer not only lived experience, but also expertise and scholarship we have honed through
academic study and training both inside and after prison.
 
Higher education in prison is a field that has experienced a period of rapid expansion over the last twenty years. Although
there is a lot of discussion in this field about the importance of including directly impacted people, it is rare to see spaces where those directly impacted people are leading the conversation. Many college-in-prison programs include directly impacted people as tokens on panel discussions, but rarely are they included in leadership positions. The time has come for those with lived experience to set the full agenda for the conversations we believe need to be had. While there is value in working with those who were not incarcerated as collaborators and thought partners, these conversations must be led by those affected by college in prison programs. After all, our expertise and perspectives should be strongly valued in the field, because we lived through it and thrived!
 
Conference objectives:

•  Prioritizing and learning from the voices of people most closely impacted by the problems our collective work is intended to solve
• Shifting power, resources, and control of the agenda to those people who have been disenfranchised and marginalized by the criminal legal system
• Recognizing and legitimizing the expertise of directly impacted scholars beyond their lived experience, and providing professional development opportunities for these scholars
• Practicing true collaboration through shared leadership and allyship

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REGISTER HERE: http://www.riseupconference.org/