An End of Year Message from the Rikers Public Memory Project
As we look back on 2025, we mourn an increasing trend of incarceration in New York City and 14 lives lost in DOC custody. The city, however, has also shipped away the Vernon C. Bain Center (also known as “the Boat”) and will welcome a new mayoral administration on New Year’s Day. We stand at a critical juncture in New York City’s history—a time of both painful reckoning and profound hope. For too long, the shadow of Rikers Island has loomed large, a symbol of systemic failure, deep-seated racism, and human rights atrocities. Yet, a future without Rikers is not just a dream; it is a promise, and a moral imperative for our city as the deadline to close the jails on Rikers for good in 2027 comes closer and closer each day.
The Rikers Public Memory Project (RPMP) exists to ensure that when the physical structures of Rikers come down, its ugly and shameful history is never forgotten, and more importantly, never repeated in New York City or anywhere else. The path to justice and true reform begins with memory, preservation, and the power of human stories.
This year, RPMP has worked tirelessly to bring the stories of hundreds of New Yorkers to life by:
- Growing and Maintaining the Archive: In 2025, more than 30 people have generously contributed to our Oral History program. Telling one’s story is a brave act of reclamation, and one that we honor with meticulous care to preserve, transcribe, and describe the records before we can make them accessible.
- Changing Narratives through New Works of Art: We have empowered nine directly-impacted artists through our Narrative Change Fellowship, allowing them to share their experiences and visions for a better future through compelling visual arts.
- Curating Critical Conversations and Healing Spaces: We have created outlets, locally and nationally, to hold the stories of people impacted by Rikers and incarceration everywhere. We have also regrounded in the needs of our community to provide offerings like community acupuncture and expressive arts workshops as a part of these crucial public programs.
Two people viewing the Rikers Timeline. Photo by Alex Bershaw courtesy of the Weeksville Heritage Center.
We hold hope that the new mayoral administration will keep the city’s promise of closing Rikers once and for all, ending its racist legacy, and setting an example for reparative and restorative justice for the rest of the country. RPMP’s work safeguards that promise, ensuring that memory informs action. As the legal landscape inevitably changes in our city, we will be here to remember, repair, and redress the harms of Rikers.
This is where your partnership becomes essential, especially at a time when mission-driven work is under attack. As we look to the new year, your support will enable us to meet ambitious goals:
- Enhance the Archive: Our Digital Archive will add recently recorded Oral Histories and new ways to interact with our people’s history of Rikers, including an improved way to view the Timeline. Our Digital Archive will add recently recorded Oral Histories and new ways to interact with our people’s history of Rikers, including an improved way to view the Timeline.
- Advance Healing Through Art: We will advance our quilt-making project—an opportunity for impacted communities to use this tactile art-making practice, particularly one rooted in Black liberation, as a powerful tool for healing and expression.
- Amplify Artistic Voices: We will celebrate the second cohort of the Narrative Change Fellowship with a closing event and continue to platform the stories of people directly impacted by Rikers.
Please consider making a one-time or monthly recurring gift today. Your generosity will outlast our lifetimes, ensuring that the experiences of impacted people and communities are memorialized for future generations.
Help us turn the painful legacy of Rikers into a catalyst for profound, systemic change.
With hope and gratitude,
The Rikers Public Memory Project Team
From left, Piper Anderson (Director of Public Programs, RPMP) and 2024 Narrative Change Fellows Ofia Begum Ali and Michelle Evans. Photo by Jamie Rosenberg.