CSRPC Summer Internship Program

CSRPC/Beyond Prisons Interns Reflect on Summer 2024

Noah Crutchfield and Destiny Jenkins share video reflections on their experiences as CSRPC Beyond Prisons Interns this summer, offering insights on their projects, lessons learned, and goals for for the future. Watch the videos below!

      

The CSRPC Summer Internship Program supports UChicago undergraduate students (including students who graduated in June 2024) and graduate students with funding for 10 weeks of full time (35hr/week) work with racial justice/abolition organizations and movement spaces.

This is an opportunity to support and grow the power and capacities of host organizations or organizing communities, as well as create an opportunity for interns to gain hands-on experience working toward social change. 

We are grateful for the summer Metcalf funding that has made this work possible. Four of our five interns received Metcalf grants.

Pictured on the top row, left to right:

Noah Crutchfield, CSRPC Beyond Prisons Intern

Mamayan Jabateh, REAL Youth Initiative Intern

Destiny Jenkins, CSRPC Beyond Prisons Intern

Pictured on the bottom row, left to right:

Yurou Li, CSRPC Beyond Prisons Intern

Erika Romero, Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project Intern

 

HOST ORGANIZATIONS

Beyond Prisons, a project of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture at the University of Chicago, is a teaching and learning initiative that interrogates, disrupts, and works toward moving beyond carceral logics and systems. The project engages and connects students, faculty, and community in work addressing the social injustices caused by mass incarceration alongside opportunities to support education inside prisons. Our team of students, staff and community members work towards expanding the opportunities for teaching and learning with those who are justice system-impacted.

The Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) is a visual arts and education project that connects teaching artists and scholars to incarcerated students at Stateville Maximum Security Prison through classes, workshops, a policy think tank, and guest lectures. Classes cover subjects ranging from poetry, visual arts, and creative writing to political theory, social studies, and history. PNAP also offers a tuition-free degree-granting program at Stateville in partnership with the University Without Walls at Northeastern Illinois University. 

R.E.A.L. Youth Initiative ("REAL") develops revolutionary consciousness and builds community amongst currently incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth in order to work towards the abolition of prisons and the conditions that (re)produce them. REAL strives to provide an exit ramp for directly impacted youth from the routes of death or incarceration. REAL is convinced that young people who have had to (and continue to) navigate life during and post incarceration, are the best possible guides for others facing the myriad of threats stemming from police violence, incarceration, and community reentry.