I view the work of the academy as interconnected with broader workers’ movements. My union activism as a steward for United Steelworkers Local 1088-04 has focused on developing foundational supports for academic work, whether helping connect a colleague to summer health insurance, creating resource lists for international researchers on the USW Civil and Human Rights Committee, developing guides to help faculty tabulate their service work on the USW Workload Committee, or as an at-large member of HELU: Higher Education Labor United, where I am part of the working group on International Campus Worker Protections.

My local activism in Pittsburgh more broadly is centered on prison abolition and the criminalization of mental illness and brain differences. I have worked as an activist, doing court watching at Allegheny County diversionary courts and gathering data for the Abolitionist Law Center for the past five years. The data gathered from observations supports participatory defense and aims to fight coercive diversion in so-called “wellness courts.” Information on the ALC court watch program, run by Dr. Autumn Redcrosse, can be found here. Lolo Serrano’s white paper on coercive diversion, which used my court observation data, can be found here. I have presented on my experiences in mental health court as part of an educational session run by the Abolitionist Law Center for the Pennsylvania Commission for Fairness and Justice. This talk was in response to the pending PA Senate Bill 716, which would enable involuntary commitment for addiction.

My work is motivated by my own family’s experience with incarceration and involuntary commitment and is in solidarity with all people whose human dignity is not recognized by our modern criminal legal system.