Join us for this stirring conversation with Dr. Carter Carter and Alec Karakatsanis. Our guests peel back the curtain and inspire with a paradigm-shifting conversation on how they wrest life from institutions and build communities for themselves and others. By exposing the limits to our imagination when we adhere to the counterintuitive logics of institutionalization, our guests challenge us to think beyond the status quo.
Episode References
- Civil Rights Corps
- Copaganda – Alec Karakatsanis
- Copaganda Merch – Support Civil Rights Corps
- Psycho Analyst – Dr. Carter Carter’s Substack
About Our Guests
Dr. Carter is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and member of the leadership team of the union of Massachusetts state university professors and librarians. They maintain a private practice in psychoanalysis, individual and couple psychotherapy, and clinical supervision. Their writing can be found in assorted psychoanalytic journals and on their Substack, Psycho Analyst.
After beginning his career representing people accused of crimes who could not afford an attorney, Alec Karakatsanis founded the Civil Rights Corps, an organization that challenges systemic injustices in the U.S. legal system. In the last decade, the organization’s work has freed hundreds of thousands of people from illegal confinement in jail cells, reunited hundreds of thousands of families, returned tens of millions of dollars to marginalized communities, and advanced inspiring alternatives to punishment as a means of preventing and addressing social harm. He was named the 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year by Public Justice for designing and litigating landmark constitutional challenges to cash bail and modern debtors’ prison practices across the United States. The author of Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System and Copaganda (both from The New Press), he lives in Washington, DC, with a community of wonderful friends, family, weird paintings, a garden, and his rock collection. Please check out the Copaganda merch and help support Civil Rights Corps!