Lived experience as a source of knowledge. What has the room been through? What do participants already know from the inside?
See the pedagogy document for what this lens does across all themes.
Most people have met the state at its hard edge: a cop, a court, a jail, an immigration office, a benefits form, a camera. Others have met it as the thing that was supposed to help and did not. And many have, at some point, helped run something themselves, a tenant meeting, a strike fund, a mutual-aid drive, and learned what power feels like from the other side. This lens starts from those encounters, because the room already knows a great deal about how power actually works.
Anchor questions
Sample prompts to open experiential work in this theme. Adapt to your room. See the facilitator guide for general guidance on experiential prompts.
- Tell us about a time you dealt with the police, a court, or a jail. What did you learn about power?
- Have you needed the state to survive, for benefits, papers, or protection? How were you treated?
- Have you been surveilled, stopped, or made to prove yourself? By whom?
- Where have you seen people take care of something the state would not?
- When did you first understand who has power and who does not?
- Have you ever helped run something collectively? What did it take?
Materials that may help
Experiential work begins from the room. These materials extend that testimony. All are free unless marked otherwise.
Oral histories and testimonio
- The Freedom Archives, Political Prisoners collection. Audio and video statements by and about US political prisoners, drawn from a 12,000-hour movement archive. Direct testimony of courts, prisons, and control units. Free: search.freedomarchives.org
- Densho, Oral History collection. More than 900 fully transcribed video oral histories of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II, first-person testimony of mass detention, loyalty questionnaires, and camp life ordered by the state. Free: densho.org
- Johnnie Tillmon Oral History (interviewed by Sherna Berger Gluck, 1991). First-person testimony from the welfare-rights organizer who chaired the National Welfare Rights Organization, on encountering the welfare bureaucracy and organizing poor women against it. Free: csulb-dspace.calstate.edu
- American Prison Writing Archive (Doran Larson, 2013 to present). An open-access archive of thousands of nonfiction testimonies by incarcerated people and prison staff, grounding the debate about prisons in lived experience. Free: prisonwitness.org
- Assata: An Autobiography (Assata Shakur, 1987). A first-person memoir of a Black Liberation Army member’s experience of arrest, trial, imprisonment, and flight. A foundational carceral-state testimony. Free to borrow: archive.org
- I, Rigoberta Menchú (Rigoberta Menchú with Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, 1984). The canonical Latin American testimonio, a Quiché activist’s first-person account of state and military violence against her family and community. Useful as the anchor text for the testimonio tradition itself. Free to borrow: archive.org
Podcasts
- Ear Hustle (Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods, 2017 to present). The first podcast produced inside a prison, San Quentin, with incarcerated people narrating daily life behind bars and, later, reentry. A first-person account of living under the carceral state. Free: earhustlesq.com
- Melting the ICE / Derritiendo el Hielo (Freedom for Immigrants). A bilingual show broadcasting first-person stories of people held in ICE detention and their families. Direct testimony of immigration enforcement. Free: freedomforimmigrants.org
Films
- Citizenfour (Laura Poitras, 2014, 114 min). Filmed as Edward Snowden hands over NSA files, a first-hand encounter with the surveillance state as it happens. Free with ads on Tubi and YouTube, and free on Hoopla: justwatch.com
- Which Way Home (Rebecca Cammisa, 2009, 90 min). Follows unaccompanied child migrants riding freight trains through Mexico toward the US border, the immigration system as lived by children. Free with ads: tubitv.com
A note on method
Encounters with the state can carry fear, grief, and anger, and some people in the room may have papers, records, or histories they cannot speak about safely. Never ask anyone to disclose more than they choose to. The aim is to establish that what people know from the underside of power is real analysis, and to carry that knowledge into the history and theory that follow.
Status
First pass, and it may be a while before there is a second. Contributions welcome, especially testimony on welfare and benefits systems, surveillance, and encounters with the state outside the United States.