Since 1971, when its convertibility into any precious metal was suspended, the US dollar has been a de facto fiat currency. Meaning, in this case, that its value is only maintained by government regulation. But what if money was based on something else? Like time.

Well guess what? That project has been ongoing since at least the 1820s with Josiah Warren beginning a store in Cincinnati, Ohio that used time as the monetary basis of its sales. And this same project has been operating in Portland since 1997. That’s when Hour Exchange Portland was founded under the name Maine Time Dollar Network.

Founded and initially funded by Dr. Richard G. Rockefeller, MD, the mechanism of Hour Exchange is simple: if you work or sell something for x number of hours (unit of time), you can bank x number of hours (unit of currency). You can then use that to employ someone or buy something offered for x hours.

Beyond this basic structure, time-based currencies, “Time-Banking,” or “Time Trade” is based on five basic principles outlined by TimeBanks USA:

1. Everyone is an asset.
2. Some work transcends monetary value.
3. Reciprocity in helping.
4. Community (via social networks) is necessary.
5. A respect for all human beings.

The ultimate goal of TimeBanking, as outlined by Professor Edgar S. Cahn—CEO of TimeBanks USA, who directly inspired Dr. Rockefeller—in the journal “Futures,” is to address “at least three interlocking sets of problems [faced by Americans]: growing inequality in access by those at the bottom to the most basic goods and services; increasing social problems stemming from the need to rebuild family, neighborhood and community; and a growing disillusion with public programs designed to address these problems.”

But time-banking isn’t only for “those at the bottom.”

Time-banking is for everyone who wants to create networks of local reciprocity and trust that strengthen entire communities.

For instance, members earn two hours just for joining, then exchange with individual members or through collaborations like the Farm to Pantry Network. This involves offering hours to members for helping farmers plant, pick, and glean crops bound for donation to food pantries. We also reward transportation of donated produce with hours. At Hour Exchange’s annual “Bizarre Bazaar,” members exchange crafts for hours, and a burgeoning relationship between World Roots Culture Exchange and Hour Exchange Portland fosters cross-cultural dialogue.

Visit www.hourexchangeportland.org to learn more or to make an appointment to visit us at the Immigrant Welcome Center. So, what’re you waiting for? Time is money.

UPDATE – 10/15/2021

We’ve moved to Stripe! Please see c4ss.org/support for more info.

The Venmo is still active for now, although we’re expecting to get kicked off there as well at some point. And we are now set up to receive cryptocurrency donations. To donate via crypto, please contact us at editor.c4ss.org.

UPDATE – 9/25/2021

PayPal has gotten back to us. We’re unable to ever use PayPal again.

The reason given by a customer service rep was that “…your account is too much of a risk to continue a relationship with PayPal. This decision is final and irrevocable.” No further information was given and we were told no more information will be forthcoming about what “risk” was posed or what triggered this decision.

We will be able to withdraw the funds that are currently in PayPal accounts after 180 days, if PayPal determines that we don’t owe any of that to third parties. We don’t owe any of this to third parties, but of course it’s worrying given the lack of transparency so far that they could just make something up and keep it.

We’re still trying to figure out how to move forward but, in the meantime, we’ve set up a Venmo account so that we can take in a bit of emergency funding to pay writers, sound editors, and translators for their work in September. Please direct any donations in the near future to this Venmo account:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September, 24, 2021
Contact: Alex McHugh
(240) 510-7831, editor@c4ss.org

Auburn, AL – The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS), a left-wing market anarchist think tank and media center, has had its 16-year-old PayPal accounts permanently disabled. 

It is unclear at this time why PayPal has disabled these accounts. C4SS financial coordinator, James Tuttle, is working with the rest of the coordinator team to try and right this situation as quickly as possible, but we have yet to hear back from PayPal.

This is an absolutely devastating loss of service for us, made worse by the complete lack of transparency and communication around why our account has been frozen and what can be done to rectify the situation. We are currently discussing alternative payment platforms to use in the future. 

Not only does this mean we will be unable to pay writers and translators on time for September contributions, we’re not sure when or if we’ll be able to access our funding on PayPal at all. Our store and publishing operation also operate on these funds and so we’re unable to fulfill orders or refill stock for the C4SS Counter Economic Store until this is figured out.  

As a point of clarity and transparency: C4SS operates as a 501(c)3 nonprofit media organization under the name of its parent organization, The Molinari Institute and previously used this PayPal account for almost all transactions. We are fully compliant with regard to tax documentation and 501(c)3 status.

Click here to download the .pdf version for distribution.

For the ninth installment of The Enragés, host Joel Williamson met with Rad Geek to discuss his left-libertarian classic article titled “Libertarian Anticapitalism.” 

Rad Geek (Charles Johnson) is an individualist anarchist technologist and “sometimes writer”, living in the Deep South. He researches topics in the history and theory of radical individualism, left-libertarianism, and market anarchism, with an interest in intellectual and social history, and analytic philosophy.

He has written articles for The Industrial Radical, Free Voices, Reason, and The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, as well as at the Center for a Stateless Society. He is the co-editor, together with Gary Chartier, of Markets Not Capitalism, an anthology on left-wing market anarchism and the individualist anarchist tradition. He keeps a long-running blog at radgeek.com and a repository of freely available historical texts at fair-use.org.

And be sure to check out last month’s episode with Gary Chartier! 

————————————————

Enjoying all the “Markets Not Capitalism” (MnC) content? 

We are too! With the 10-Year Anniversary of Gary Chartier & Charles Johnson’s seminal work (MnC) coming up soon, we’ll be featuring even more of your favorite free market anti-capitalists on Mutual Exchange Radio in October. 

Then, look out for special bonus interviews with a selection of MnC contributors on Patreon throughout this fall. 

Become a Patron!

In this month’s episode, Logan Marie Glitterbomb and Jeffrey Novatore talk about anarchism during a pandemic and how to balance rights and safety.

• Jeffrey Novatore: https://twitter.com/JNovatore

(more…)

Update (9/6/21) from IWA-AIT:

We have bought them clothes/shoes, furniture, kitchen equipment, Internet connection, food stoke and many more.
We want you to join us : https://t.co/QpuwbfYY1U https://t.co/BGzdvR1566

— Workers Solidarity Federation-IWA (@WorkersSolidar1) September 6, 2021

From the CNT-AIT France:

English

Companions of the Workers Solidarity Federation (WSF-AIT) of Pakistan have established a fund for the purpose of assisting the passage to safety of refugees from Afghanistan. The funds raised will finance the cost of food, clothing, medicine and toiletries. Any donation, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated. This is an emergency matter.

Paypal account : https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8CzA1fkCiD

—————

French

Les compagnons de la Workers Solidarity Federation (WSF-AIT) du Pakistan a créé un fonds dans le but d’aider le passage en lieu sûr des réfugiés afghans. Les fonds récoltés financeront le coût de la nourriture, des vêtements, des médicaments et des articles d’hygiène. Tout don, même minime, sera grandement apprécié. C’est une question d’urgence.

Spanish

Compañeros de la Federación de Trabajadores Solidarios (WSF-AIT) de Pakistán han establecido un fondo con el propósito de ayudar a paso a la seguridad de los refugiados de Afganistán. Los fondos recaudados financiarán el costo de alimentos, ropa, medicinas y artículos de hygiena. Cualquier donación, por pequeña que sea, será muy apreciada. La solicitud es urgente.

Urdu

ورکرز سولڈرٹی فیڈریشن پاکستان کے دوست افغانستان میں رہنے والے انارکسٹوں کی مدد اور انہیں وہاں سے نکالنے کے لئے دنیا بھر کے ساتھیوں سے مالی مدد کی اپیل کرتی ہیں. پاکستان میں اس طرح کے مالی معاونت کرنی والے ویب سائٹ نا ہونے کی وجہ سے ہم اپنے پاکستانی کامریڈز کی درخواست پر ان کی مدد کر رہے ہیں. تمام ساتھیوں سے جتنا بھی ہوسکتا ہے وہ ہماری مدد کریں

Pashto

د کارګرانو د پيوستون فدراسیون د پاکستان دہ ملګرو څخه غوښتنه کويی چې په افغانستان کې د انارشیسٹانو او ګډوالو سره مرسته وکړي او د نړۍ له ګوټ ګوټ څخه د دوی مالي ملاتړ وکړي. څرنګه چې په پاکستان کې دا ډول ویب پاه شتون نلري ، موږ د خپلو پاکستاني ملګرو سره د هغوی په غوښتنه مرسته کوو. ټول همکاران باید زموږ سره څومره چې امکان ولري مرسته وکړي

Farsi

فدراسیون همبستگی کارگران از متحدان پاکستان می خواهد تا به آنارشیست ها و پناهندگان در افغانستان کمک کرده و از سراسر جهان به آنها کمک مالی کنند. از آنجا که چنین وب سایتی در پاکستان وجود ندارد ، ما به درخواست آنها از دوستان پاکستانی خود کمک می کنیم. همه شرکا باید تا آنجا که ممکن است به ما کمک کنند

Do we still need bosses? What would a real free-market look like? Can egoists work a day job? Dig into these questions and more with the always-amusing James Weeks and your host Logan Marie Glitterbomb.

For the eighth installment of The Enragés, host Joel Williamson met with Gary Chartier to discuss Gary’s left-libertarian classic, “Libertarians for Redistribution.“

Gary Chartier is Distinguished Professor of Law and Business Ethics at La Sierra University, a senior fellow of the Center for a Stateless Society, and is the author, editor, or co-editor of fourteen current or forthcoming books, over forty scholarly articles, as well as a couple of self-published books of poetry and homilies.

Visit Gary’s website – http://www.garychartier.net/

C4SS would like to extend a warm welcome to our newest author, Bent Delbeke! Their first piece is The Concentration of Capital, and expounds on some of the possibilities and benefits of non-capitalist markets.

As part of our vetting process, we ask several questions in an attempt to understand where an author stands on certain key issues. Below are Bent’s responses to a couple of those questions:

National anarchism, for me, is an oxymoron. My view on the matter is that hierarchies are necessary if one wants to limit who gets into a community, and so a world with borders, even if they are heavily localised, is inherently in conflict with anarchist and libertarian-socialist ideals. We must base our communities on affinity and affinity alone. If one wants to do the work a community demands of its members, then one should be able to join this community, and so there is no place for reactionary politics regulating who gets to join a community based on ethnicity. Any form of nationalism is contradictory to anarchism as the nation is a societal construct that has to be held up by force, and so requires violence and hierarchies.

I am quite supportive of LGBT+ issues. I think both capitalism and statism have oppressed people with different sexualities and different gender identities, and ignorance is still rampant in our society when it comes to these issues, and certainly trans issues. From an anarchist perspective, I would argue that the greatest argument against homophobia and transphobia (and all other forms of bigotry) is the argument of the individual as being only subject to himself. One should be able to do anything one pleases with oneself, and any other consenting adult, it is no matter of the state, nor of “society.” And I think we should be defending LGBT+ and especially trans people against attacks on their identity and autonomy.

If you haven’t subscribed to Roderick Long’s Agoric Cafe YouTube channel yet, you’re really missing out! On the Agoric Cafe channel, you can find videos and interviews “devoted to philosophy, politics, history, literature, and whatever else [Roderick feels] like sounding off on.” The interview episodes have been interesting and explorative and the most recent two will be of particular interest to C4SS readers.

First, for more classic libertarian fare check out this interview about polycentric mercantile law with Bruce Benson:

Episode description: Roderick Long chats with economist Bruce L. Benson about polycentric mercantile law in medieval Europe and among the Plains Indians; whether private law can work outside of small homogeneous communities; causation vs. correlation in the gun control debate; the perils of scissors-and-paste history; the abolition of criminal law; the incentival perversities of the reservation system; the inevitability of the state; and what intellectual debt he owes to the u.s. military.

Then, for a look at the other side of C4SS, watch this one on worker co-ops and wildcat strikes with Jack Ran of the Groundwork Book Collective:

Episode description: Continuing the San Diego bookstores series, Roderick Long chats with Jack Ran of the Groundwork Book Collective, a radical left-wing bookstore on the campus of UCSD. Topics include running a bookstore as an egalitarian collective; participating in wildcat strikes; surviving arson attacks; the dynamics of anarchist/Marxist cooperation; conflicts with the university administration; what campus leftists owe to Donald Trump; and the joys of reading Proudhon, Kevin Carson, and Shawn Wilbur.

Hope you enjoyed this update on Agoric Cafe!

We’ve released this episode of The Outgroup publicly both as a way to announce our new Patreon levels and as a sort of apology for the recent gap in MER episodes. Thanks for your patience while we sorted things out! Mutual Exchange Radio will be back at the end of the month.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this episode of The Outgroup, featuring Alex McHugh, Logan Marie Glitterbomb, Evan Pierce, and Joel Williamson. This one’s a little explicit, but it’s a lot of fun. We talked reactions to Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby,” analyzed the billionaire space race, and stick around until the end for a quick round of the “Ideologue Game.”

If this preview isn’t enough to convince you, check out the recently upgraded support tiers over at the C4SS Patreon. We’ve added a new zine, and up to FIVE books for high-level sponsors. So if you’ve been trying to fill out your left-libertarian library, consider becoming a supporter today. Now, you can be part of the…

• Benjamin Tucker Brigade ($2)
• Lysander Spooner Gang ($5)
• Karl Hess Corps ($10)
• Elinor Ostrom Crew ($15)
• PJ Proudhon League ($20)
• De Cleyre Club (Assoc. Producer – $25)
• Peter Kropotkin Union (Co-Producer – $30)
• Gustave de Molinari Circle (Producers – $50)

For the seventh installment of The Enragés, host Joel Williamson met with Nathan Goodman to discuss their article titled Abolition: An Economist’s Perspective. This article is a contribution to an upcoming C4SS anthology called Total Abolition: Police, Prisons, Borders, Empire.

Tune in to learn how economics can contribute to the pursuit of abolition, and how self-governance is best realized through polycentricity and the market process.

This fall, Nathan will become a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics at New York University, where he will be affiliated with the Program on the Foundations of the Market Economy. He earned his Ph.D. in economics at George Mason University, where he was a Ph.D. fellow with the Mercatus Center and a Graduate Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Nathan’s research broadly focuses on political economy, applied microeconomics, market process economics, New Institutional Economics, and defense economics. He analyzes how alternative institutional arrangements shape the provision of security. Nathan is also the former Lysander Spooner Research Scholar in Abolitionist Studies at C4SS.

In this episode of The Hadal Quadrants, host Leslee Petersen speaks to activists Ashley Shade and Logan Marie Glitterbomb about queer liberation, Pride, and the recent rash of trans youth bills.

Intro music by Joel Williamson

Be sure to follow The Hadal Quadrants on Facebook and Twitter.

And if you want early access to C4SS podcasts, free swag, and episodes of The Outgroup, become a supporter on Patreon today!

Click below to watch C4SS senior fellow Roderick Long’s lecture on “How (and Why) to Be a Free-Market Radical Leftist.” This lecutre was originally presented as part of the Liberty Webinars, a format of online lectures with a subsequent discussion, organized by Students for Liberty CZ together with Slovak Students For Liberty.

How do free markets go together with leftism, and what is left-libertarianism? Are the markets in fact the best methods for addressing conventional leftist values, like concerns for discrimination, exclusion and hierarchy? Why might a libertarian reject capitalism? 

Roderick is a professor of philosophy at Auburn University, editor of The Industrial Radical and Molinari Review, and co-editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. He is also a founding member of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and senior fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society, and president of Molinari Institute and Molinari Society. You can read his blogs at https://praxeology.net and https://aaeblog.com, or watch his youtube channel Agoric Cafe.

For the sixth installment of The Enragés, host Joel Williamson met with Jaimine to discuss his piece “Social Statism called Caste.“

Without fearing the consequences, Jaimine writes boldly on a variety of topics including culture, hindutva, and economics. Jaimine made a political splash after spray painting “Taxation is Theft” on public walls in Mumbai, India, and was even interviewed by mainstream media in regards to the spectacle. He is currently in the process of completing his PhD in politics.

Show Notes:

• Caste and Compatability: https://www.thelipstickpolitico.in/post/caste-and-compatability-under-the-anuloma-sun-there-s-something-wrong-with-the-way-we-love
• At the intersection of rape and caste: https://www.thelipstickpolitico.in/post/at-the-intersection-of-rape-and-caste-where-do-we-go-from-here
• Casteism inside RSS, a right-wing paramilitary org: https://jaiminism.substack.com/p/casteism-inside-rss-and-its-abhorrence
• Manual scavenging: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2021/04/its-21st-century-and-casteist-manual-scavenging-still-continues/
• Crematorium workers and their mental health: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2021/04/why-are-we-not-talking-about-mental-health-and-safety-of-crematorium-workers/
• Is Twitter casteist in India? https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2021/05/twitter-india-suffers-from-caste-bias/

In this episode of Green Market Agorist, Logan Glitterbomb interviews recent addition to the C4SS podcast team, Leslee Petersen. Leslee joined the team to host The Hadal Quadrants, a new show on the C4SS podcast network. You can find the first episode here.

We’ll also soon be migrating Green Market Agorist to the same hosting platform as the rest of our shows! This means you’ll be able to find GMA on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and more. Plus, we’ll try to maintain service to some of the alternative media hosting platforms where many of GMA’s followers listen right now. Look out for more info soon!

Running show notes for Green Market Agorist:

• Logan’s legal fund: https://gogetfunding.com/legal-defense-for-logan-glitterbomb/
• LIMITED EDITION shirt to help fund with Logan’s legal fund: https://greenmarketagorist.teemill.com/product/freedom-for-glitterbomb/

• Intro song: Greenwashing by Appalachian Terror Unit
• Outro song: Bash Back by Night Witch 

• Shirts, hoodies, and reusable bags: https://greenmarketagorist.teemill.com/
• Homemade health, beauty, and cleaning supplies: https://www.etsy.com/shop/GreenMarketAgorist
• Help this podcast and claim your FREE ounce of kratom from Brave Botanicals today!  https://mybravebotanicals.com/freeounceofkratom/ref/30/
• Shop for kratom and CBD at Brave Botanicals:  https://mybravebotanicals.com/ref/30/

• Patreon: https://patreon.com/lglitterbomb
• SubscribeStar: https://subscribestar.com/greenmarketagorist
• PayPal: https://paypal.me/glitterbombqueen
• CoinPayments: https://coinpayments.net/$Glitterbomb

In this episode of The Hadal Quadrants, host Leslee Petersen speaks to activists Kitty Stryker and Cathy Reisenwitz about sex work, decriminalization, and the bills FOSTA/SESTA and its impact on sex work and internet culture.

Kitty Stryker has been working on defining and creating consent culture for over 10 years through her writing, workshops, and website consentculture.com. She’s the editor of “Ask: Building Consent Culture,” and is especially interested in bringing conversations about consent out of the bedroom into everyday life. Kitty also enjoys working as a street medic for direct actions, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and caring for her two cats. She identifies as a sex worker, queer, asexual, sober, anarchist and femme. You can find her at http://kittystryker.com/

Cathy Reisenwitz is a writer with bylines in The Week, Newsweek, Forbes, the Daily Beast, VICE Motherboard, Reason magazine, Talking Points Memo, Ravishly, Kink and Code and other publications. Her newsletter is Sex and the State. She is the Head of Content at a tech startup and VP of Comms for San Francisco Sex-Positive Democratic Club. She is also a regular contributor to Exponents Magazine. You can find her at https://www.cathyreisenwitz.com/

The organizations mentioned in the podcast to support sex workers are listed here:
https://www.swarmcollective.org/
https://bayareaworkerssupport.org/
https://swopusa.org/

Intro music by Joel Williamson.

Be sure to follow The Hadal Quadrants on Facebook and Twitter.

And if you want early access to C4SS podcasts, free swag, and episodes of The Outgroup, become a supporter on Patreon today!

In this episode of Mutual Exchange Radio, host Zachary Woodman interviews Jesse Spafford. Jesse is a Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin working on the project REAL – Rights and Egalitarianism.

His research is focused on social and political philosophy with particular attention paid to debates between libertarians, socialists, and anarchists over the moral status of the market and the state.

Jesse espouses a version of left-libertarianism that’s quite different from what you’ll hear promoted by many here at the Center—a philosophical position that holds that certain moral principles traditionally associated with libertarianism are compatible with egalitarian views about the distribution of resources.

It’s a great episode for libertarians and anarchists alike. As Zach and Jesse dig into these differences and discuss what a stateless society should look like, you’ll find yourself questioning all kinds of prior assumptions. 

Further Reading:

• “Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Private Property,” The Routledge Handbook of Anarchy and Anarchist Thought
• “Does Initial Appropriation Create New Obligations?”  Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (jesp.org)

And of course a huge thanks to everyone who’s been supporting us on Patreon!

If you haven’t signed up yet, now is a great time — we’ll be including a sneak preview of our upcoming new show on the Patron-only roundtable show The Outgroup this Sunday. So, if you want access to that sneak preview, all the episodes of The Outgroup, and more, become a supporter of C4SS on Patreon today.

Hello podcast fans!

I’m excited to share that our podcast network continues to grow. This is largely thanks to the loyalty and support of our listeners, supporters on Patreon, and friends of the Center. So thanks!!

This support not only allows us to keep making great programs like Mutual Exchange Radio and The Enrages, but it also allows us to continue improving our craft. So, look out for higher audio quality, tighter edits, and a more organized approach to the C4SS podcast network in the coming months.

To start, take note of this newly-official schedule for show release dates:

• Mutual Exchange Radio, with Zachary Woodman
  • Will now release on the last Friday of the month.
• Green Market Agorist, with Logan Glitterbomb
  • Will continue to release on the 15th of each month.
• The Enragés, with Joel Williamson
  • Will now release on the 22nd of each month.
• The Outgroup will remain spontaneous and unscheduled 😉

We’ll also have a new show joining the lineup in June!

It will release every other Monday, starting on June 7th, 2021. 

Look out for a sneak preview of the new show on the upcoming episode of The Outgroup, which will release on Patreon on Sunday, May 30th.

The Enragés: Embracing the Implications of Statelessness

Or, click here for the blog post and show notes.

Green Market Agorist Episode 13: Privatizing Investigative Services (feat. Ann Skelerton)

Or, click here for the blog post and show notes.

For the fourth installment of The Enragés, host Joel Williamson met with the Tech Learning Collective to talk about their article “Imagining an Optimistic Cyber-Future,” which is a creative exploration of radical strategies for a liberatory techno future. They also explore the impetus behind Tech Learning Collective and even offer some practical advice for those interested in carving paths toward a free digital world.

This episode was released in two parts. Here’s Part I: 

And Part II: 

Patrons got early access to both, and you can too by supporting our work on Patreon! Plus, you’ll get access to our upcoming episode of the C4SS roundtable show, The Outgroup, as well as three years of past Outgroup episodes, and swag from the C4SS store.

Incarcerated people are still people. I am appalled that this is not common sense to everyone. Yet the opposite attitude constantly appears both implicitly and explicitly among a disturbing number of both members of the populace and U.S. government policies. From being denied certain kinds of reading materials all the way to being denied genuine human contact through solitary confinement, incarcerated individuals are treated as if they are not entitled to the essential forms of expression and connection that people need. One of these is music, but it has a long history of defiantly persisting despite the inhumane environments of bondage and incarceration. This can be traced back to the field hollers and spirituals of Black enslaved people* to—post-emancipation onward—the prison work songs of forced laborers such as those recorded at state penitentiaries in Louisiana by ethnomusicologist Dr. Harry Oster in the 1950s. And this defiance persists to the modern day where, as Vernon Cook—who was sentenced in 2008 to 22 years in prison—describes, “Music is needed when you have 22 years hanging over your head. It was a godsend for me. In the band room, we became like brothers.”

This is why it is essential that, as we continue our struggle to abolish the prison-industrial complex and the very institution of prisons entirely, we must support the expression of incarcerated people through music. Therefore, the Police Abolition (PoAb) Committee of the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers—the musicians union I am a part of and you may have heard of through our “Justice at Spotify” campaign—has partnered with Die Jim Crow Records—a record label run for and by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated folks and their allies—to help meet supply of music equipment (used and new) with demand from musicians within prisons through our DJC x UMAW Instruments Into Prisons campaign. If you have music equipment—including but not limited to microphones, midi cables, keyboards, drum kits, an alto saxophone, guitars (acoustic or electric), 4- to 8-track recorders, and teenage engineering pocket samplers—you would be willing to donate, please fill out the form HERE. You can also make monetary donations to support the shipping of donated gear and the purchase of additional gear through the donation page HERE. Also, check out the general website HERE.

Some of the groups and projects we’re looking to support initially are The Masses—a hip hop group formed at Allendale Correctional Institution made up of members Carlos, PC, Mac, Silent Jungle, i-Self, Tú, Wan, Big Clay, Bob-O, and Kev—who are looking to release an album in 2021, and Michael Tenneson—one of the lead artists on the forthcoming project Territorial—as well as others at Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility. Folks at San Quentin State Prison have also expressed interest in receiving gear.

*Note: The author has chosen to replace the term “Black slaves” with “Black enslaved people” in order to use more humanizing language. Amended 7/20/22.