Our group is explicitly prison and police abolitionist.
What does this mean? Different things to different people! But generally, abolitionists strive to transform society into one where we focus on meeting each others needs and addressing the root causes of harms rather than selectively (ineffectively) administering punishment as a false solution to harms that prisons and police actually create and maintain. We know the state-sanctioned violence that police and prisons administer are part of a cycle of oppression that targets marginalized communities (Black, poor, queer, immigrant, Indigenous, disabled - to name but a few) and that this punishment promises only violence, not healing.
Politicians offer prisons and police as a profitable, compelling false solution to resource deprivation in communities. This narrative never identifies "crime" as the product of intentional, systemic poverty and racial capitalism. Instead, "crime" becomes an excuse to further splinter communities so that violence can then grow and manifest behind closed, locked doors. The corporations and politicians benefiting from prisons would rather pad their pockets and scapegoat marginalized groups than address the root problems in society that prisons not only fail to address but also make worse.
What does a world without prisons look like? How can we create a culture centered not on crime and punishment, but one that focuses on care, healing, and harm reduction?
If you'd like a more complete definition of abolition and the world we're trying to create, check out this Study Guide!
We'd also like to offer a few quotes from some of our favorite abolitionist organizers. If these quotes resonate with you, we would encourage you to (1) read the full article linked to each quote; (2) consider supporting these organizers financially or by sharing their work on your social media.
"When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, they envision a society as violent as our current one, merely without law enforcement — and they shudder. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.
People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for all?"
More articles by Mariame are here. For audio learners, here's a podcast she did last year with Chris Hayes.
To support Mariame's work, consider donating or promoting an organization she co-founded: Project NIA
From Angela Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete?
“[Prison] relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.”
“Radical opposition to the global prison industrial complex sees the antiprison movement as a vital means of expanding the terrain on which the quest for democracy will unfold. This movement is thus antiracist, anticapitalist, antisexist, and antihomophobic. It calls for the abolition of the prison as the dominant mode of punishment but at the same time recognizes the need for genuine solidarity with the millions of men, women, and children who are behind bars.”
Links to more content by Angela Davis here. For audio learners, here is a talk she gave at UC Davis.
To support Angela Davis' work, consider donating or promoting an organization she co-founded: Critical Resistance
From Kelly Hayes' Incarceration is Killing Us (audio and transcript available)
"We have to be willing to change everything, and part of that will be changing how we assess the value of people’s lives. Right now, many of us are being viewed as disposable by people who have significantly more power and money than we do. Even within the working class, there are gradations in how we experience crisis, and how much we benefit from the subjugation and disposal of others. Imprisoned people are generally among those at the bottom of such hierarchies. We are conditioned by society to look away from the horrors of the prison system and to blame those experiencing carceral violence for the abuse they suffer. We are conditioned to believe that some people are expendable. Because capitalism doesn’t simply happen to us. It infects our lives and our relationships with others. It positions us within dynamics that lead us to enact its violence, just as we do when we ignore the experiences of imprisoned people.
To transform our society such that we are not disposable, we have to destroy the moral framework that absolves the system of its violence. And we have to destroy the framework that absolves us of ours. Because it’s the same framework. It always has been. It’s a framework that tells us it’s okay to let people die, and that tells others that it’s okay to let us die. This terrible moment is providing us with many opportunities to redefine who we are to each other. The catastrophe that is playing out in U.S. prisons is one of those opportunities. We have a moral choice about whether to allow these people to be sacrificed to the virus, or whether we will insist that they are not disposable and must be saved. If we cannot internalize this lesson ourselves, then we aren’t going to have what it takes to imagine a better world, let alone build one."
Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Change Everything
“Abolition requires that we change one thing: everything.”
Further Reading and Links:
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