For Immediate Release Contact Sarah Pritchard 510.459.1207
[email protected] Abolition 2021: Virtual concert benefit to support families of people incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary April 9, 16, 23, and 30 Ticketing link: https://noonchorus.com/abolition-2021/ New Orleans, LA, March 11, 2021 — Starting on Friday, April 9 and running for four consecutive Fridays in April, Abolition Apostles national jail and prison ministry will host Abolition 2021, a virtual concert benefit to support families of people incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola. Produced by musicians Jolie Holland and Johanna Samuels and Peter Bauer, the benefit will launch Abolition Apostles’ fundraising campaign to open a hospitality house to welcome friends and family visiting loved ones incarcerated at Angola. Featuring over seventy artists, Abolition 2021 will stream on Noonchorus. Responding to the moral urgency of the call for the abolition of mass incarceration, artists have donated their time to create a unique multidisciplinary streaming concert. As musician and producer Jolie Holland explains, “The idea of creating a place of radical hospitality and welcome amidst the cruelty and injustice of the prison system inspired me to produce Abolition 2021.” Located on the site of several former slave plantations, Angola is the largest maximum security prison in the United States. As Abolition Apostles co-founding pastor David Brazil explains, “Angola’s history as an antebellum plantation and site for convict leasing post-Civil War demonstrates the roots of mass incarceration in slavery and white supremacy. It is the evil heart of the American carceral system” The name Angola recognizes the region in south western Africa where the majority of enslaved Africans who worked on the plantations that comprise the contemporary prison were originally from.