Theoretical History of Abolition

It's my pleasure today to talk to you about abolition. There's a lot of conversation now about abolition and when I begin them, I tend to ask people, "When was the first time you've heard that term?" For most of us, that term was first heard around the institution of slavery, and particularly the US slavery and chattel slavery. For a second, think about this. If we were to think about two dates: 1619-1865 and admittedly, those dates are debated. But for the purpose of this illustration, that's the time period in which child slavery existed in the United States, where in particular, people who are of African descent were not allowed to own the products of their own labor, to accrue capital, they were exploited, they were dehumanized. That's a 246-year period in which people are trying to fight against the institution of slavery. There's something that seems central to the tying and the birth of this nation. Folks who were abolitionists didn't just appear in the Antebellum Period. It wasn't just when slavery was coming to an end and folks started to write novels instead, it was often those people who were under the institutional slavery fighting daily tooth and nail. Abolitionists historically and contemporarily, are those who engage in everyday struggle and practice in envisioning a world that almost seems impossible. In fact, when you hear abolition, I don't want you to think that it's a singular position that every abolitionists agrees on exactly what it is. Instead, there are multiple threads in multiple histories that come together to culminate in this moment. Abolition is both a worldview, a strategy, and it's also a vision. Part of understanding where abolition comes from today, we have to understand the emergence of the prison-industrial complex. The prison-industrial complex is related to things like the military-industrial complex, and this isn't simply about things being big and complex. Anytime you hear something like the military-industrial complex or the prison-industrial complex, you actually want to think about things that are solution to a problem, that create greater problems, and the solution tends to be a self-enclosed market. For example, let's think about the military-industrial complex. One of the ideas is the protection of American citizens. It necessitates a strong military presence. But military presence also means that the United States goes out and it occupies another places. In its pursuit of freedom and democracy, would it creates as an opportunity for folks who actually respond back to US occupation in US military force, which creates a need for more bombs, more guns, more tanks. The solution to the problem creates a market, and before you know it, the system becomes so big that were so entrapped in it that you can't actually get out of it. In a similar way, the prison-industrial complex operates in that way. There is a solution to a problem which is imprisonment, but it begets more solutions that are actually problems, and we remain deeply ensnared in them. In the 1990s, there was the emergence of mass incarceration as a central consideration. But what abolitionists have done is not simply looked at mass incarceration, meaning a lot of the conversation about there are certain sets of people who are incarcerated to deserve to be incarcerated, and there are those who are incarcerated who don't deserve to be it. Instead, abolitionist say, "Well, what is actually the purpose of incarceration? Do we think it's rehabilitation?" Do we think it's actually creating safety? When we go to the roots of this, we see quickly that that's not the case. In fact, prisons themselves often take people away from communities, but they don't take away social problems. Abolitionists are interested in going directly to the root of problems and trying to understand what does racial capitalism do? What does patriarchy do? What does ableism do? What are these interlocking systems of oppression, and how to actually start to break them down, and abolish them? Abolition is not simply about breaking down these systems, but it's about working to create a world that is worth living in. The most contemporary moment of abolition has roots in strong ties to the organization, Critical Resistance, that was birthed out of California, but spread out into a myriad of young and old active people trying to re-imagine, rebuild, and recreate the world. When you hear a call coming from the movement for black lives about defund police, this is about work that has been seeded in many places in Chicago with be BYP, in Detroit with Detroit Action, all across the nation and the globe, really raising different questions about what it is we need. Defund the police is not a call for incremental change or reform. Instead, defund the police is about a set of active steps to move towards abolition. Reform it's often believe that a system is working well. If we tinker with it a bit, it'll actually function better. Abolitionists say, "No. In fact, the system isn't working well. The system is not designed to create safety. The system is not designed to address crime. The system is designed to literally limit the resources that certain sets of people have." Reformist often look at systems, and say, "Something is off, something's a little bit wrong. If we tweak it here, if we reform here, if we make marginal change there, it'll be better, and it will function well." Abolitionists instead say, "No. The system is working well, but it's not often doing the thing that you think it does. The system that we have in place actually allows those who have money, who have property, who have resources to hoard more of it. Those without it, the system blacks them out, and it locks them up, infuse them as disposable. It doesn't address harm, it actually creates more problems." Abolitionists aren't saying defund police so that we can give some money to social workers, so that we can give some money to schools. Instead, we say, "What is the function of police? Do they actually do what you think they do, or have you been sold a mythology around them?" Instead, abolitionists want to go to the heart of the issue and not tinker simply with reforms. Now that doesn't mean that abolitionists won't take steps to move towards a more just world, a more equitable world. But we realize steps on that path. If we're not careful, we'll actually solidify the systems that are already there. They will legitimize the institution of prison. They would legitimize the ways in which we incarcerate people. We have to step away from that. What abolitionists want is not simply to remove systems of oppression, but to go and build new communities. To go and say, "What are the indigenous ways of understanding harm and hurt? How does violence play out? What are the most common forms, and how can we stop those things at their root and radically redefine it?" Abolitionists don't see humans as disposable. In fact, humans are the most valuable resource we have. Rather than waiting on some top-down policy, or rather than waiting on incarcerating people in a magic of rehab, which is not part of the actual project of prison. What abolitionists want is not simply to reform a system that's broken. The system is working as it was designed to work. Instead, abolitionists desire to get to the roots of harm, and say, "What are the most common forms of violence? How do we address those within a community? How do we make sure that if there are issues around mental health services that they are addressed fully? How do we make sure that if economic deprivation is one of the central things that leads people into incarceration, how do we destabilize that?" Abolition is about creating a new world today using the best methods possible.