Screening and Panel: Closing the Last Penal Colony

Join filmmaker and organizer, Edwin Santana, for a screening of his film, Closing the Last Penal Colony. This film explores the history of the Rikers Island J*il complex and the movement to shut it down, and it won Honorable Mention for Best Short Documentary at the 2024 Katra LatinX Film Festival in NYC. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with Santana and other members of the Campaign to Close Rikers, who will speak on the status of the plan – passed in 2019 in response to grassroots organizing – to close the Rikers Island jails, and how the city can reinvest in communities. This program is part of the Rikers Public Memory Project exhibition at the Weeksville Heritage Center, on view from February 1st through March 1, 2025.

Speakers

Edwin Santana, filmmaker and Community Organizer at Freedom Agenda

Michael Higgins Jr, Land Use Planner with New York City Environmental Justice Alliance

Lezandre Khadu, Member of Freedom Agenda, and mother of Stephan Khadu, who died at Rikers Island

Dr. Divine Pryor, Criminal Justice Co-Chair with the NAACP of NYS

Host or Publisher Rikers Public Memory Project