Season 2 of the upEND Podcast Explores Questions of Solidarity

In the first season of the upEND Podcast, we explored the past and present of the family policing system, commonly misidentified as the child welfare system. 

Now, we’re widening our scope. 

How does family policing intersect with reproductive justice and Black maternal health? Are borders and deportations a tactic of family policing? What can we learn from international freedom movements in the work ahead? 

Season Two of the upEND Podcast will draw connections between movements to deepen our political education, build solidarity between organizers and activists, and bring new people to the fight for our collective liberation. As Maya Angelou said, “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.” 

Season 2 Trailer

New episodes will be released biweekly from September 2024 through February 2025.

Meet the Hosts

upEND’s program director Josie Pickens is a Houston, TX-based organizer, educator, journalist, and culturalist whose writings and public conversations focus on race, gender, and sexuality. Josie has been regularly published in Ebony, Essence, Bitch, The Root, Cassius, Mic, and more. She has more than twenty years of community organizing experience where her focus has been prison-industrial-complex-abolition, family policing system abolition, and building mutual aid networks.

Jaison Oliver is an educator and community organizer working on upEND’s communications team. As a member of the BLMHTX/ImagiNoir Collective, he builds collaborative spaces in order to imagine and create abolitionist communities where Black people can thrive.