LifeLines Project
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LifeLines is a media project working to end Life Without Parole in Pennsylvania by highlighting the voices and analysis of people serving LWOP sentences.
LifeLines is a media/cultural project conducted in extensive, long-term collaboration with eight people serving Life Sentences Without Parole or Death By Incarceration sentences in Pennsylvania. The project uses interviews, creative media interventions, and sound installations to support an emerging statewide campaign to abolish Death By Incarceration. We use the term “LifeLines” to refer to the f
12/16/2024
EMERGENCY CALL IN DAY: Our dear friend Thomas Gordon is incarcerated in a South Carolina prison, where his life is being threatened. He has begun a hunger strike to demand an immediate transfer and needs your support!
Thomas is a Delaware State prisoner who several years ago was transferred under Interstate Compact to the South Carolina prison system. In September, he was attacked in an altercation with two gang-affiliated prisoners; he was stabbed and he also stabbed those two individuals in self defense. As a result of that altercation, there is now a bounty on his life and he has been facing imminent death threats. We are asking everyone to contact the Delaware State Prison System to demand he be transferred out of South Carolina immediately.
Michael Tipton
DE Office of the Commissioner
302-739-5601, ext 5235
Heather Hamlett
302-857-5218
[if that # doesn’t go through, try 302-739-5601, ext 405218]
Thomas Gordon is currently at Ridgeland Correctional Institute and his # is 387021. Once you have made the calls, comment to let us know what kind of response you got. A call script and more info (+ two bonus calls) can be found at tinyurl.com/ThomasTransfer
Love and solidarity,
Layne & Emily
03/23/2024
We have been touched and humbled by the massive outpouring of love and support for Dawud and his family and community over these past few weeks. Thank you to all of you who took the time to share what Dawud meant to you and who donated or shared the fundraiser. We will be dispersing the funds in a few days, so if you have not yet made a donation and would like to, now is the time: https://gofund.me/5eb4ef57
03/02/2024
Fundraiser now live! Please give what you can to honor Dawud, his work, and his family.
In the very first LifeLines Project publication, Dawud wrote:
“I believe that we can collectively create light at the end of the tunnel, so that is one reason to keep fighting. Also I do not want the younger brothers whom I love to have to endure this madness for the rest of their lives, and I want my comrades to one day see the light of day! We cannot accomplish such goals without believing in what we’re doing. My purpose travels well beyond my own self interest because I want to be a part of creating a truly just world for us all to share.”
Let us continue to create that light.
Help support Dawud’s family and legacy, organized by LifeLines Project On February 22nd, we lost a giant in our movements and our lives. David “Dawu… LifeLines Project needs your support for Help support Dawud’s family and legacy
02/27/2024
We are collecting photos, writing, and projects from Dawud here: http://lifelines-project.org/dawud-love/
If you have photos you want to share, send them to [email protected]
Sharing this powerful event where Dawud calls in from prison to discuss "WEology." His words and actions live on and continue to inspire and guide us. We love you comrade.
WEology was written by four incarcerated people in Pennsylvania about how they are practicing transformative justice while incarcerated. The booklet’s authors – Qu’eed Batts, Avron “JaJa” Holland, David “Dawud” Lee, and Nyako Pippen – discuss why transformative justice is important, how they are using transformative and restorative practices even in the confines of prison, and about how their own personal journeys led them to this approach.
This event features a panel of activists responding to sections of the booklet and sharing their own reflections. You can download the PDF version of the booklet here: https://lifelines-project.org/2021/09/14/weology/
PANELIST BIOS
Kempis Ghani Songster is currently leading the Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project’s pilot Healing Futures Restorative Justice Diversion program. Prior to that, he spent three years as Amistad Law Project’s Healing Justice Organizer and host of ALP’s Move It Forward podcast. He is also a founding member of Right to Redemption, the Redemption Project, the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), and co-founder and director of Ubuntu Philadelphia. Since his release in 2018 after thirty years in prison – starting when he was 15 years old – Ghani has emerged as a leader and visionary in Philadelphia’s movement to end mass incarceration and to create transformative and restorative responses to harm and violence.
Kris Henderson is the Executive Director of Amistad Law Project. They are a movement lawyer, a co-founder of Amistad and a co-founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration. They are on the steering committee of Free The Ballot! Incarcerated Voter Family Network and on the board of directors of Black Youth Project 100. They are a 2018 Law for Black Lives and Movement Law Lab Legal Innovators Fellow and a 2019 Soros Justice Fellow.
David “Dawud” Lee is a co-founder and member of CADBI and sits on the inside advisory board for the Human Rights Coalition and Decarcerate PA. He regularly works with Amistad Law Project and Abolitionist Law Center and is one of the co-founders of the Abolitionist Reading Circle. He is also a co-founder of the Dare-2-Care youth leadership and empowerment project at the State Correctional Institute at Coal Township and has helped to facilitate that program since its beginning. Dawud is 57 years old and has been incarcerated for over 32 years, serving a death by incarceration sentence. He has been a part of the Lifelines Project since 2014 and is also a co-founder of the Life Line Association at SCI Coal Township.
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 has worked with the Center for Constitutional Rights to end Death By Incarceration sentences in the United States and the National Unlock The Box Campaign to End Solitary Confinement. He is a co-founder of the Human Rights Coalition. While incarcerated, Saleem wrote extensively on prison abuse, social injustice, state violence, and juveniles charged and sentenced as adults. His writings were featured in Truthout, The Appeal, San Francisco Bay View, and Solitary Watch. He was released from prison in 2018 after spending over two decades incarcerated for an offense he was convicted of as a child.
MODERATOR BIOS
Emily Abendroth is a poet, teacher and anti-prison activist. Much of her creative work investigates state regimes of force and power, as well as individual and collective resistance strategies. She is the author of the poetry collection ]Exclosures[ and The Instead, a book-length collaborative conversation with fiction writer Miranda Mellis. Her newest book, Sousveillance Pageant, coasts restlessly between fiction, poetry, and research essay. She is a founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration and Address This!, as well as a co-creator of LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty.
Layne Mullett is a founding member of Decarcerate PA and the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration, and a co-creator of LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty. They have been active in social justice movements for over a decade, organizing against gentrification, austerity, and the prison industrial complex, and working for the freedom of political prisoners. Layne’s writing has been published in the journal Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, in the anthology Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, and in The Long Term. Layne currently serves as the director of media relations for the American Friends Service Committee and sits on the community advisory board for Critical Resistance.
We are devastated to share the news that Dawud passed away yesterday. We will be sharing more in the coming days and weeks but this video captures just a fraction of the number of lives he touched and how very loved he is. Rest in Peace and Power comrade. We love you.
09/20/2022
After a two year hiatus we are loading up the buses in Philadelphia and headed to Harrisburg for the rally to abolish Death By Incarceration! Join us at 1pm on the Capitol steps or tune into Facebook live to watch from home. Second chances keep our communities safe!
04/28/2022
This morning the PA Board of Pardons will consider whether to recommend Dawud for release, so we are sharing the rest of the posts and sending so much love to Dawud! Today's post features Levi Bentley, Zahra Patterson, Kate Dollenmayer, Chris Cohen, Sergio Hyland, Tony Downey, Maria Goellner, Leroy Walker, Nutta Verdier, Layne Mullett, Antonio Thomas, and Emily Abendroth. Check out all the testimonies of the incredible contributions Dawud brings to his community both inside and outside of prison at http://lifelines-project.org/dawudtaughtme/
04/26/2022
Today's post features Emily Verbug. LifeLines member and dear friend David "Dawud" Lee will appear before the PA Commutation Board this spring. Over the next few months we will be highlighting all the incredible contributions he brings to his community both inside and outside of prison. To participate, check out http://lifelines-project.org/dawudtaughtme/
04/25/2022
Today’s post features William Yem Case. He writes: “ humility and showed me how to not only change, but to improve myself so I can then in turn help others. Dawud has inspired me to be educated and showed me the essential importance of being understanding and always listening.
Dawud has had a great impact on my life. Before we met, I had issues managing the myriad of different feeling I had from being oppressed, incarcerated and treated in a subservient way. He taught me how to channel my feelings positively: by reading, writing, and talking thru problems and differences. For every action, there is a reaction. It is your choice to react negatively or positively. He taught me not to allow anyone to take the power I have over myself. He helped me learn to think things thru and to use my energy positively. Dawud taught me that focusing on negatives is wasted energy. He taught me to see the good and be the good.”
LifeLines member and dear friend David "Dawud" Lee will appear before the PA Commutation Board this spring. Over the next few months we will be highlighting all the incredible contributions he brings to his community both inside and outside of prison. To participate, check out http://lifelines-project.org/dawudtaughtme/
04/24/2022
Today's post features Annie Re. LifeLines member and dear friend David "Dawud" Lee will appear before the PA Commutation Board this spring. Over the next few months we will be highlighting all the incredible contributions he brings to his community both inside and outside of prison. To participate, check out http://lifelines-project.org/dawudtaughtme/
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LifeLines Project C/o Decarcerate PA, PO Box 40764
Philadelphia, PA
19107
Opening Hours
| Monday | 9am - 5pm |
| Tuesday | 9am - 5pm |
| Wednesday | 9am - 5pm |
| Thursday | 9am - 5pm |
| Friday | 9am - 5pm |
| Saturday | 9am - 5pm |
| Sunday | 9am - 5pm |