By: Diana Block “Street art, George Floyd protest, Minneapolis, MN, June, 2020” by Renoir Gaither In mid-2020, my friend Nina Serrano, an author/poet/activist who hosts a radio show about books, Cover-to-Cover on KPFA, asked me to do an update of an interview I did with her in …
Read moreAbolitionist Fantasies: Revisiting the Fictional 2020 of My Novel
By Michelle Dillon In his 2018 article “How Prisons Serve Capitalism,” Dan Berger wrote, “More than profit, capitalism generates misery from its poorest subjects.”[i] Especially in the context of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that a fulcrum of carceral control is not simply …
Read moreKeeping Communities Connected: COVID-19 and the State of Prison Profiteering
By: Emily Marra, Hen Povereni, and Natasha McMillan On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.[1] This sparked a dialogue regarding one of society’s most ill-protected and often forgotten populations: incarcerated individuals. Abolitionists have long argued that systems of incarceration …
By Whitney Richards-Calathes Every few months I have the same dream. I am in a room. Or is it hallway? A bedroom? Maybe standing in front of a desk. There can be a wall with pictures hung up. The scenes change, but they are always …
Read moreWho does rage belong to? Black women* are more than our abolitionist labor
For decades, state structures have been heavily invested in two harmful, contemporary modes of so-called “feminist” state intervention: carceral feminism and femonationalism. Both “feminisms” advance and legitimize policing, incarceration and immigration controls in the name of women’s liberation.
by Kauwila Mahi A contribution to Abolition’s conversation on “States of Emergency/Emergence: Learning from Mauna Kea” (read the call here) Emergent-Sea, EA turning like the page Emergency politics keep us in a cage Emergent-cease and desist through prayers and tu-te-lage Emergent-seize the LAND BACK. During …
By Zoe Luba A largely residential suburb in southeast England, located an hour-and-a-half train ride from London, houses three different prisons for children and youth from across the United Kingdom: HMP Cookham Wood, HMP Rochester, and Medway Secure Training Centre. Barbed wire fences enclose …
Read moreSecure schools and prison abolition in the UK: During Covid-19 and beyond
mothers trapped within the prison industrial complex in one way or another have been modeling what it looks like to integrate care work (often conceived of as “service”) and political organizing as part of a collective, revolutionary project.mothers trapped within the prison industrial complex in one way or another have been modeling what it looks like to integrate care work and political organizing as part of a collective, revolutionary project.