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bfpnola · 2 years ago
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Abolition For Beginners (2023 Edition)
In honor of Tyre Nichols and all others we have lost to policing and imprisonment. In honor of Black History Month. In honor of Better Future Program's mission to educate and serve marginalized youth globally... Let's break down abolition, again. (As usual on Tumblr, tap for better quality.)
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Image description below. Written by @reaux07. Proofread by the volunteers and supporters of @bfpnola.
Image Description:
[ID: All of the following slides use a wrinkled, black fabric as their background with black text (bolded red added for emphasis) on top of white boxes with rounded corners. “@bfpnola” is written in the top right corner and the sources for the slide are in the bottom left corner. 
Title Slide (No. 1):
Written in red text, “UPDATED FROM 2021 EDITION.” The outlines of the word “ABOLITION” is written line by line 8 times in light grey with the year “2023” written on top in bold, white lettering. Below, written in red within a white bubble and red arrow, it reads “FOR BEGINNERS*.” Across from the bubble, “@BFPNOLA” is in red. Below, in red again, the asterisk mentioned before leads to the following note: “This post is heavily text-based so if you do not learn best by reading, feel free to utilize our Abolition Study Guide in our bio under "Social Justice Resources" instead!” Lastly, white stars and outlines of grey circles can be seen in each corner of the slide.
Slide No. 2 reads:
Abolition is an anti-capitalist, intersectional framework that aims to not only destroy the cages created by various “industrial complexes,” but to create inclusive, effective alternatives for addressing harm. As defined by Dr. Jennie Wang-Hall, an “industrial complex (IC) is a system that creates profit through embedding into social inequities and providing an ineffective product that keeps consumers under-resourced and returning for more.”
The most common examples of such systems? Prison and policing, psychiatry, foster care/family policing, the military, and even the Family (as an institution, not kinship altogether).
Despite common misconceptions, abolition is not just a negation of what currently exists, but an active evolution of what community-based support can and has looked like. Abolition is about the radical working-class imagination, about Black and Indigenous imagination.
If individualistic, reactive, punishment-based strategies are maintained, true accountability and rehabilitation will never exist. Instead, we can choose to be proactive, analyze the circumstances that perpetuate violence, and address harm at the root! Of course, no one is saying that harm will completely cease to exist, but to paraphrase butch anarchist Lee Shevek, wouldn’t it be a profound improvement to expand our capacity to respond to harm and challenge our abusers, rather than being restricted to system-granted authority? Especially when such systems deliberately ignore the suffering of marginalized communities (e.g. people of color, queer and trans folks, women and femmes, Mad and disabled folks, and so on) to begin with?
Sources: @Dr.JennieWH, @ButchAnarchy, Stella Akua Mensah, Erin Miles Cloud, @WokeScientist
Slide No. 3 reads:
Before we continue any further, let’s destroy the myth that cops actually stop violence. First off, we can’t depend on crime stats at face value because this begs the question of who exactly gets to define what counts as a “crime” and why (e.g. drug possession and sleeping in public vs. tax evasion of the wealthy and wage theft). Continuing, crime rates often only reflect violations that have actually been reported, chosen to be shown, and deemed out of line. By this logic, crime rates are simply reflections of cops’ perceptions, not of the material and emotional realities of the proletariat (i.e. the working-class).
As for perpetuating violence, “US law enforcement killed at least 1,183 people in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record for police violence.” (And those are just the deaths that were reported. In our home state of Louisiana, turns out the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, as of January 12, 2023, has been unlawfully destroying records of officer misconduct for at least 10 years.) Many (69%) of these murders were cases in which no offense was alleged, were mental health or welfare checks, or involved traffic violations and other nonviolent offenses.
This is, of course, without even touching on the involuntary servitude (i.e. enslavement) and maltreatment ongoing in American prisons. How many more deaths must occur before the general public says enough is enough? Or is this acceptable since these are working-class, disabled, Mad, non-white, queer, and trans lives being lost?
Sources: @InterruptCrim, The Guardian, Mapping Police Violence, @VeriteNewsNola
Slide No. 4 reads:
So we agree police are harmful. Why abolition instead of reform? Historically, reforms have either provided further funding to the prison, foster care, and psychiatric industrial complexes and/or just reinforced harmful ideologies surrounding policing as a whole. And trust us, these systems already have more than enough money. In the fiscal year of 2021, at least $277,153,670,501 were spent on federal law enforcement and prisons as well as on police and prisons by state and local governments. Can you even conceptualize a number that large? We could end all American medical debt with that much money. We could even provide clean water and waste disposal to everyone on Earth!
Continuing, reforms like body cameras are pitched as making officers more accountable, that if “done right” policing will actually keep people safe, and that those who do not use excessive force are suddenly no longer guilty of perpetuating centuries worth of systemic oppression. In reality, body cameras require further funding and increase surveillance!
Similarly, civilian oversight boards and the push to “jail killer cops” reinforce the belief that cases of murder, assault, falsifying information, and so on are exceptional occurrences rather than intrinsic to the very nature of policing itself. This is where the phrase “All Cops Are Bastards” comes into play, stating that while the individual character of some officers may be morally permissible, all cops are part of a “bastardized,” or corrupt, system.
Sources: Security Policy Reform Institute, Matt Korostoff, @CriticalResistance 
Slide No. 5 reads: 
Even laws don’t prevent police violence, e.g. the murder of Eric Garner despite the NYPD passing a policy against chokeholds, or the murder of Daunte Wright despite the passing of the George Floyd Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act and a separate Justice in Policing Act of 2020.
Alternatively, we can advocate against the expansion of policing “responsibilities,” i.e. not allowing officers to address Mad individuals in vulnerable states, the housing crisis, or people who use drugs (PWUD). We can reroute funding into non-coercive, peer-led initiatives for harm reduction, de-escalation, first aid, and self-defense. And maybe most importantly, we can reaffirm that EXTENSIVE power can, in fact, be found amongst everyday folks like you and me!
Abolition is not a one-and-done sort of deal but rather a progression of steps toward an infinite future of improvements. The act of building parallel infrastructures and modes of governance while the previous ones still exist is known as dual power. Abolition must begin as dual power. We can start today!
And in building such, these steps cannot: legitimize or expand oppressive systems we aim to dismantle, create divisions between “deserving” and “underserving” people, preserve existing power relations, or utilize exclusionary, one-size-fits-all, standardized treatments.
Sources: @ProjectLets, @HarmReductionCoalition, CrimethInc., Survived & Punished NY
Slide No. 6 reads:
One of the main questions brought up, though, is what abolitionists plan to do in the case of homicide, rape, domestic violence, and other harms. While this is entirely valid, this question seems to imply that 1) police are already effectively responding to such harms rather than perpetuating and/or ignoring them and 2) that there is one collective abolitionist response.
For one, the majority of sexual assault, for example, goes unreported and less than 0.5% of perpetrators are incarcerated. (And this assumes that through the reporting process and incarceration, survivors will somehow find healing, perpetrators will find understanding, and that sexual assault does not continue within prisons.) Meanwhile, let’s use our hometown as one example of many, a complaint of sexual violence is filed against a New Orleans Police Department officer every 10 days and nearly 1 in 5 NOPD officers have been reported for sexual and/or intimate partner violence. 
And secondly, we have a plethora of organizations like Critical Resistance and cultures like that of the Diné (Navajo) to learn from and build upon. We don’t have to be stuck within this false dilemma fallacy, that there is only policing or total chaos. Don’t you see that that is the state’s way of constricting communal power?
Sources: @RAINN, @CopWatchNola, @WokeScientist
Slide No. 7 reads:
To expand this conversation, abolition heavily aligns with the political ideal of “anarchism.” Anarchism supports the absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual. And despite its negative connotations, anarchy also reflects an evolution of community-based care rather than just a deconstruction of what currently exists.
A simplified version of its 6 agreed-upon principles are:
Autonomy and Horizontality: define yourself on your own terms, we stand on an equal footing
Mutual Aid: bonds of solidarity form a stronger social glue than fear, support your community
Voluntary Association: associate or don't associate with whomever you wish
Direct Action: accomplish goals directly rather than depending on representatives or authorities
Revolution: overthrow those in power who enforce coercive hierarchies (ex. white supremacy)
Self-Liberation: you must be at the forefront of your own liberation, freedom must be taken
While being an abolitionist does not require alignment with anarchism, it is worth considering how the state plays such an enduring role in various social harms. Concurrently, whenever you treat other living beings with consideration and respect, come to reasonable compromise rather than coercion, and decide to share or delegate tasks, you are already living by anarchist principles.
Sources: Peter Gelderloos, David Graeber
Slide No. 8 reads:
So, how can you get involved? How do we continue the efforts already being made by activists worldwide? After such an overload of information and even more to learn, we understand how political frameworks like abolition can seem daunting, but they don't have to be! Here are some general next steps:
Read the "8toAbolition" steps.
Look into "podmapping" so you know whom to run to when you have been harmed or perpetuate harm.
See if there are any pre-existing mutual aid networks in your community, and if not, start one with your neighbors or peers!
Begin to research issues affecting communities other than your own. Abolition is intrinsically tied to all of us as we are all surveilled. For example, do you understand how prison and policing further ableism, transphobia, or the sex trade? What about policing internationally (see our allies in: the Kingdom of Hawai'i, Palestine, Artsakh, Kashmir...)?
Research the differences between capitalism, socialism, and communism. Abolition and anti-capitalism are foundational to one another as well.
Look into the other industrial complexes we named in the beginning (psychiatry, foster care, the military, the Family...).
Volunteer (remotely or in-person) with organizations like Better Future Program (@bfpnola) to both educate yourself and directly serve your community!
And if you're looking for further reading/listening, BFP offers over 3,000 FREE social justice, mental health, and academic resources in our Linktr.ee, including study guides for beginners. While we can't promise that the struggle for liberation will always be easy, BFP will always do its best to support you in whatever way we know how.
End ID.]
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daughterofdessalines · 2 years ago
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odinsblog · 2 years ago
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There is no reforming this.
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A cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder, Patrisse Cullors, was killed by Los Angeles police after he got in a traffic accident and officers who showed up repeatedly Tased and restrained him in the middle of the street, according to body-camera footage and his family’s account.
Footage from the 3 January encounter released on Wednesday showed that Keenan Anderson, a 31-year-old high school teacher and father, was begging for help as multiple officers held him down, and at one point said, “They’re trying to George Floyd me.” One officer had his elbow on Anderson’s neck while he was lying down before another Tased him for roughly 30 seconds straight before pausing and Tasing him again for five more seconds.
(continue reading)
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thundergrace · 2 years ago
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A reminder that police budgets have only increased since 2020. 2022 saw the most killings by cops in America than any year on record. 'Defund the police' is not a political platform, and no major party supports it, which is why there's no federal efforts to reduce police funding and allocate funds to community resources (even though it is proven that heavy police presence does not deter crime and high crime rates are directly linked to poverty and a lack of community resources).
The facts of this particular killing may very well be that Keenan Anderson caused an accident while under the influence, flagged cops down for help, was caught off guard when he was suddenly being treated as a suspect, and got anxious (naturally or as an effect of drugs) due to well cops being cops at him, and started to resist arrest as most Black people do at this point out of fear and the cops tased him to get him to comply.
But here's the thing, people don't need to comply. Cops just need to get control of a situation long enough to detain someone. When you get to the point you're putting a knee to someone's neck, you're past the point you were able to cuff them and get them into a vehicle.
It can never be justified. It will never be justified to kill an unarmed person. It's barely justified when they're armed when a trained cop should be able to shoot someone in a non-lethal area (it's literally easier) to disarm them.
There's no way you can make a case for several officers not being able to cuff one average man with no weapon.
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kyrsteniopsis · 5 months ago
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According to CREW, a nonpartisan group, beyond this promise of police immunity (which is already happening as we've seen time and again), Trump has plans to militarize the police against "people experiencing homelessness, 'wag[e] war' on drug dealers, crack down on border crossings and ramp up the use of the death penalty. Many of these plans would represent an unprecedented expansion of presidential power and could lead to a slippery slope of weaponizing the federal government against civilians and infringing their civil liberties."
If you want to sit this election out (and I would encourage that you don't), the least you can do is know what the stakes are.
More lives lost to police violence and yet more vulnerable people like Sonya Massey dead.
Yes, the Democrats aren't perfect, blah blah blah. I'm tired of this one-sided argument. Go yell at a tree, be an adult, and vote on behalf of people who aren't as privileged as you are.
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imkrisyoung · 2 years ago
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Every time I hear about systemic violence against Black people, whether it’s physical or otherwise, it hurts me to my very core as a Black person intersecting multiple marginalizations.
Keenan Anderson asked for help and the police tased him to death.
I don’t know what to do right now.
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spooniestrong · 2 years ago
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callese · 2 years ago
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Story
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thingstrumperssay · 2 years ago
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This is like shooting somebody who has cancer, them dying shortly after being shot and you going "it was the cancer that killed him."
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fuckyeahmarxismleninism · 2 years ago
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By John Parker
Activists from the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, CodePink, Socialist Unity Party, Young Communist League, Organization US, and community activists joined a street meeting for justice and against police terror and U.S. war along the parade route for Martin Luther King Day in Los Angeles. The speakers, including one from Ukraine, demanded an end to U.S. weapons being sent to Ukraine and escalating towards World War III while encouraging more killing in a long war that only benefits the military industry and U.S. imperialism.
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kaythacritic · 2 years ago
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Weekly Recap: January 9th - January 15th
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tilos-tagebuch · 2 years ago
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Keenan Anderson, der Cousin einer „Black Lives Matter“-Gründerin, wurde in Los Angeles von Polizisten zu Tode getasert. Source: Twitter
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thehutchinsonreportnewst · 2 years ago
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belascoainyneptuno · 2 years ago
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“I Have a Dream,” at Watchung Booksellers
Tomorrow, on #MLKDay, I will do a reading from my translation of “I Have a Dream,” that beautiful and emblematic speech by Dr. #MartinLutherKing, Jr. The event will take place at @watchungbooks, at 7PM. (If you’d like to attend, please register here.)
Tomorrow, on #MLKDay, I will do a reading from my translation of “I Have a Dream,” that beautiful and emblematic speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The event will take place at Watchung Booksellers, at 7PM. (If you’d like to attend, please register in this link. The entire conversation will be in Spanish.) I will dedicate this event:– to #KeenanAnderson, a high school teacher, who was…
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ineversawthat · 2 years ago
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Fucking hell this is so fucking bleak
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All bad apples. #abolishthepolice
#Repost @callmeshivy with @use.repost ・・・ I am just heartbroken by this one. Keenan Anderson was somebody’s high school ENGLISH TEACHER!? A DAMN TEACHER… and TASED him to death!? This man flagged down officers for help following his involvement in a CAR ACCIDENT!? And what did he get??? An overzealous and egotistical cop that triggered events that would steal his life.
NOTHING has improved since 2020! We STILL have NOT realized NATIONAL police reform! STILL. This time… we lost a TEACHER because of inaction. #justiceforkeenananderson #keenananderson #blacklivesmatter #sayhisname #defundthepolice #lapd #policebrutality #policemurder #police #racism #acab #policeviolence https://www.instagram.com/p/CnXA0JAOSg-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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