Conversation with Willie Kearse and Ben Passmore

How do archives and first hand accounts serve a critical role of documenting abolitionist and anti-fascist work inside and ouside of prisons?

Evelyn Perez moderates as author Willie Kearse and cartoonist Ben Passmore discuss incarceration, revolt, memory keepers, and storytelling through writing and comics.

 

 

Evelyn Perez is an artist from the Bronx and was formerly an outreach assistant on the Jail & Prison Services team. 

 

 

 

 

 

Willie Kearse was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is the co-founder of the Archive-Based Creative Arts Program, as well as a Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) graduate and mentor with a commitment to rebuilding communities. The effects of urban renewal, the crack era, and being wrongfully convicted compelled him to study law and use an ink pen to fight for freedom. He has organized and facilitated numerous anti-violence and mentoring programs. Willie is a published author as well as a public health and criminal justice reform advocate.

 

 

 

Ben Passmore is the author and illustrator of the comics Your Black Friend and Other Strangers (2018) and the Eisner Award-winning Sports Is Hell (2020). He has contributed numerous comics about grassroots liberation movements and Black radical history to the Nib, the New York Times, The Believer, and many other publications. His latest graphic novel, Black Arms to Hold You Up, follows obscure histories of armed Black rebellion.

 

 

Running from April 4 through June 28, 2026, The Warehouse is a collaboration between artist and writer Vic Liu, abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba, and the Bedford branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. The project features more than two dozen new, full-scale paintings by Liu that cover the library's walls, transforming the public space into an immersive exploration of resistance, survival, and possibility.

Find a full list of programming here.