Survivor Chronicles: Free Them All
Welcome to Survivor Chronicles: Free Them All, a podcast by Survived & Punished NY. We are a collective by and for survivors, organizing for the abolition of prisons and policing with the understanding these systems do not protect survivors, but further endanger them. Since 2017, we’ve been organizing with criminalized survivors in NY State prisons.
This podcast is part of our mass clemency campaign. Survivors who were criminalized for their acts of survival are now banding together to demand clemency from Governor Kathy Hochul, who can free anyone she wants with the stroke of a pen. Despite proclaiming herself pro-survivor, she refuses to grant them clemency, offering survivors nothing but policing and cages.
Together, we're saying: enough. These are the stories of survivors and their loved ones who have been abandoned and betrayed by the state of New York. These are also stories of resistance, resilience, connection across prison walls, and of refusing the logic of disposability underlying the US prison system.
Throughout the season, we’ll put calls to action in our show notes as episodes come out. We want you to learn about the harms of the carceral system and the re-victimization survivors are subject to, but we also want you to join us in the fight. Please look out for ways to get involved and follow our campaign on Instagram and Twitter at survivepunishny, or visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org/. Survivor Chronicles was made possible by the support of NYC Connect and Focus for Health. Writing and producing by Jade Abdul-Malik. Podcast art by Mon M.
Survivor Chronicles: Free Them All
Survivor Chronicles: Tami and LaQuintae's Story
As a heads up, this episode contains mentions of sexual violence, suicide, and abuse.
In 2025, Tami Eldridge—who’s 25 years into a sentence of 57 to life—was invited to speak at Chief Judge Rowan Wilson’s State of the Judiciary. When she found out they wanted her to attend in person and wear a suit, she initially balked: “I'm not putting on no fake face, like I'm gonna go home one day.” But after speaking to her daughter LaQuintae Bradley on the phone, she had a change of heart. LaQuintae wanted to see her mother dressed up, in nice clothes. Tami reconsidered, “I think I need to wear the clothes so they'll know what I look like before I die and be in a coffin and wear a real suit.”
This is one of the countless ways Tami and her eldest daughter LaQuintae have reached for each other over the years. This episode tells the story of how against all odds, miles apart and separated by prison walls, they formed a profound and loving relationship even though Tami has been incarcerated since LaQuintae was 4 years old. Or as LaQuintae puts it, how they’ve learned to walk the walk of incarceration together.
Inside prison, Tami is revered. She runs a step team for college students, built a library, teaches nutrition, and is earning her second master’s degree. She started a journey of personal transformation in large part motivated by her desire to show up for her children and other women at Bedford as a mother and mentor. Not out of a desire to win her own freedom, at least not at first: “I know that I might never leave Bedford Hills, but others will, and so I help everyone…I am choosing my own way in a place where I was sent to die. I choose to do things to try to repair the harm that I have caused and to love my daughters and to lift up others.”
Since the State of the Judiciary, however, hearing how her story has inspired so many others and seeing her daughter’s faith in a future for her outside of prison, Tami is beginning to envision a future beyond Bedford Hills for herself. She’s imagining freedom. And she’s working on a clemency application. Without a commutation from the Governor, she won’t be eligible for parole until she’s 83 in 2056. But Governor Hochul could release Tami today, with the stroke of a pen.
- Watch Tami speak at the 2025 State of the Judiciary.
- Learn more about LaQuintae’s business here.
- Read more about Tami’s case and sign her petition for clemency.
Written by Linda Luu, Nathan Yaffe, and Jade Abdul-Malik. Produced and narrated by Jade Abdul-Malik.