Patrice received her B.A. in Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2006. Academically and politically she has been an active organizer in the anti-Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) movement. Her academic interest explore how multiculturalism as an organizing tactic to dismantle racism, within the movement to abolish the PIC, participates in the commodification of Blackness. Through this examination, she intends to map the shifts and complex differences represented within conceptions of Blackness in the US, to argue for a multi-layered anti-racist approach to organizing for the abolition of the PIC that does not rely on the tenets of multicultural universalities. 

Research interests:
Prison Industrial Complex Abolition/ Anti-Black Racism/ Multiracial Coalitions/ Feminist Theory

B.A. in Journalism with a minor in Spanish from California State University, Long Beach. M.A. in Mexican-American Studies from California State University, Los Angeles

During her Master's program she worked as a high school Spanish teacher for 3 years. She is now a doctoral student in the department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her research interests include feminist theory and critical media theory within the field of Chicano/a Studies. Specifically, she is looking at how the mass media effects Latina teenage girl sexual attitudes and behaviors, and advocates for critical media literacy, including an in depth analysis of the political economy of the mass media. A recent project was contributing as a researcher and interviewer for an oral history documentary about significant women who have contributed to the community of East Los Angeles, entitled “Las Grandes de East L.A.” 

Research interests:
Feminist theory and critical media theory within the field of Chicano/a Studies

BA, 2008, Spanish and Portuguese
University of Iowa

Recognizing the urgency of re-theorizing “the rural,” Joshua Mitchell maps how racist and heterosexist State violence manifests itself in small towns through policing and prison siting.  Engaging with a history of theory and activism across North America, Joshua hopes to investigate the political relevance of rural organizing to larger social justice movements.

Research interests:
Rurality, queerness, the prison-industrial complex

B.A., 2008, African American Studies (Magna Cum Laude) University of California, Riverside

From an interdisciplinary perspective, examines the ways in which oppressive social structures shaped the experience of Africans in the Unites States. Focuses on the indeterminacy of race and the historical, cultural, and social forms of resistance from people of African decent. 

Research interests:
African American Diaspora, U.S. Slavery/Reconstruction, The African American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), nineteenth and twentieth-century African American Literature