Building on years of organizing, this conversation brings together artists, organizers, and community members to examine the impact of the Borough-Based Jail Plan (BBJP) in New York City, with a focus on the skyscraper jail being constructed in Chinatown. Situating the project within a broader landscape of mass incarceration and displacement—from the police takeover of Park Row to the expanding carceral reach in Chinatown—we ask: what does community safety mean and who gets to define it? In place of a jail, what else could be here? 

The program explores the role of artists and cultural workers in the aestheticization of carceral systems through design, and how art can obscure the violence of incarceration even as it can also serve as a tool of resistance. We invite participants to reflect on what it means to refuse participation in carceral design and to imagine alternative futures grounded in care, collective well-being, and worlds beyond punishment.