Mission Statement
The Rikers Public Memory Project collects and makes visible the stories of people most impacted by Rikers Island, to mobilize action toward repairing its generational harms and interrupting the dehumanizing narratives about people harmed by Rikers.
Vision
Our vision is a New York City and society that has chosen a culture of care over punishment.
About Us
The Rikers Public Memory Project: A Community Truth and Healing Process (RPMP) is the outcome of an ongoing partnership between Freedom Agenda, Create Forward, and the Humanities Action Lab. Together they sought to explore how collective memory can be used as a strategic organizing tool in the movement to close Rikers Island. We document and make visible the impact of Rikers Island by asking:
- What should we remember about Rikers?
- How should we remember Rikers?
- Why should we remember Rikers?
Our work is organized around three pillars:
Remember
With over 105 recorded interviews, the RPMP oral history collection is the largest public archive of narratives on the legacy of Rikers Island.
Repair
In 2023, the multimedia mobile exhibit will bring art, narrative, and community healing workshops to neighborhoods most impacted by Rikers.
Redress
Our Reparative Justice Initiative will document the public health impact of Rikers and advocate for the reinvestment in harmed communities.
VALUES
ACCOUNTABILITY: We commit to accountability to people directly impacted by Rikers through our work with directly impacted organizers and leaders as advisors and consultants on the project, and by ensuring narrators always own their narratives and decisions about how their narratives are used.
ECOSYSTEM OF CARE: Harnessing public memory and narrative change is a participatory process that involves a wide range of people in a deeply emotional journey at many stages, one that requires a strong and continuous community of care. Our ecosystem of care provides support for the entire community involved in the oral history collection process, using trauma-informed approach - understanding the social and emotional impact of trauma on all individuals involved.
BUILDING COMMUNITY: We are not only documenting, preserving and creating a platform for individual stories of directly impacted people, but bringing these stories and their narrators together into a supportive community, recognizing that the collective voice of a community gets us closer to the truth.
SYSTEMIC CHANGE: We use public memory in pursuit of reparative justice for the communities that are criminalized and bear the mounting cost of incarceration. In doing so, we foster a culture of healing and care over punishment. We challenge racial disparities in who owns narratives about Rikers, including who educates the larger public, and who analyzes its lessons for future policy.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
- The public narrative about Rikers should be defined by impacted communities
- The stories we tell are adaptive and inform our culture
- We use oral history as a tool to restore and repair relationships to each other and the community
- We draw on the power of narrative to facilitate collective and interpersonal healing
- We use public memory in the service of justice and closing Rikers