#we have to actually build the community that will support prison abolition

[backwardblackbyrd]

To quote Alice Walker:

"The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. With raising a reading level from second grade to third. With simplyfying history and writing it down (or reciting it) for the old folks. With helping illiterates fill out food stamp forms--for they must eat, revolution or not. The dull, frustrating work with our people is the work of the black revolutionary artist. It means, most of all, staying close enough to be there whenever they need you."

We know you want to burn down capitalism.

But for today, just don’t answer your boss’s call off the clock.

[cazort]

Whenever I post about how I am voting for Kamala Harris and think it's important to vote for Democrats, and my post starts blowing up, I get a lot of negative comments from people who claim to be progressive, saying things like "Voting doesn't matter." or" Both parties are the same".

And here's the thing. I always check out these people's blogs.

And you want to know what? I never, not once, have found any of these people posting anything actionable to move beyond the two-party system. None of them mention or talk about ranked choice voting (RCV) or total vote runoff (TVR). None of them talk about the laws and structural factors that keep the two party system in power. None of them even have a candidate that they recommend voting for as a protest vote. None share and link to articles in high-quality media sources that break out of the right-left binary. And the ones that are calling for really radical solutions like revolution, none of them have a constitution, none of them have a proposed tax policy, none of them have a proposition of the way a radically different (such as growth-free) currency system could work.

And here's the thing. I do all of these things. I've been doing it for decades, since before I was even on Tumblr.

I'm not just voting blue. I'm voting blue AND advancing RCV and TVR. I have written pages and pages on tangible tax policy reform, on local zoning reform (I'm active locally pushing for such reform), transportation funding reform (pushing for it for 20+ years now). I've been involved in prison reform and abolition activism at the local and federal level. I even started a community currency 16 years ago.

Listen to me and listen to other people who are doing the work. We are all saying the same thing. Don't listen to these people who aren't doing the work. They claim to be radical but they're not doing anything at all. I don't know if they're real people or not, but they're butting into my posts and they're telling me and other people not to vote because it doesn't make a difference and doesn't do enough, but like...they're not doing anything at all to push society in a good direction, to solve problems, to build a better world. They're just posting negative stuff on some blog and they're not even posting information on their blog that might help tear down the systems they're supposedly opposed to.

I don't trust any of these people and I don't want you to either.

Seriously, if someone is telling you not to vote, telling you that your vote doesn't matter, scrutinize them. Who are they? What are they advocate? If they are telling you not to vote, what do they want you to do?

99% of the time they don't actually encourage you to do anything positive. And I have a sneaking suspicion that these people don't actually want to tear down the systems they are superficially criticizing, they are secretly trying to support them. I suspect that they actually want you to feel negative about voting and disengage. They want you to feel helpless, and to step back from the political system, to step out. They are serving the people who benefit when you don't vote. And that's the far-right authoritarians.

If you, like me, want a better society in a deeply flawed two-party system, you vote for the better of the two parties AND you take other measures too, supporting RCV (which had massive wins in both Maine and Alaska and could be implemented in more states if we work towards it) and TVR (far superior to the IRV used in Maine and Alaska), and researching and talking about issues and getting involved in issues that aren't being discussed. Join the Strong Towns movement and work to move beyond car dependence. Join the movement to expose the injustice of payroll tax and abolish all payroll taxation including FICA and all the smaller ones too and replace them with other taxes such as carbon tax or other, progressive consumption-based taxes. Start thinking critically about currency, maybe read Greco's book "Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender".

I am outside the two party system and have been so my whole life. I am doing the work and have been doing the work for decades now. So listen to me when I tell you to vote blue. Vote not just for Harris but research and look up your house and senate races and your state and local races as well and vote in all of them. It's a small but important step. And don't just stop there, do all of these other things I'm telling you about too. It's a "both...and" scenario.

Don't submit to these people trying to tell you not to vote. Scrutinize them. You will see what they are really about and once you see it you will not be manipulated by them.

[qweerhet]

i feel like leftist spaces are constantly dancing around the fact that, in order to form strong communities, it is necessary to build community bonds that can successfully navigate and withstand truly horrible traumas, abuse, and sexual violence. like, "we will just rid all the people who commit such acts from the community" is only a solution insofar as it is the logic behind prisons and mental institutions. like abolitionist-centered communities have to reckon with how to navigate severe traumas without forcibly removing victims or aggressors, or else they aren't strong communities, they're social scenes like we already have currently.

note: i know this is what the concept of restorative justice addresses--i'm gesturing towards how left spaces focused on abolition and restorative justice often tend to fail at putting their money where their mouths are, for lack of a better term. there is a knife's edge to walk between "no individual is required to keep the bond between them and someone who's committed significant harm intact under any circumstances" and "there needs to be some resilience in individual bonds through severe trauma in order for accountability and healing to actually work," and too often that edge gets completely and utterly fumbled in favor of "soft" community othering and unpersoning. i have seen people in left spaces talk about restorative justice and building strong communities out of one side of their mouths, and out the other side argue for everyone in their social scene to shun a specific person who's committed sexual violence and deny them any social support or connection whatsoever (including their family members!).

[uncloseted]

What’s your opinions on the prison system and on prison rehabilitation?

I am actually a (semi-active) prison abolitionist. One of the beliefs that drives me is that everyone is redeemable with the right interventions and support system, and that people's actions are a result of their life circumstances, not an inherent evil that they possess. Because of that, I don’t think we have the right to deny people an opportunity for redemption in favor of retaliatory “justice” that ultimately helps no one but temporarily makes people feel better.

And on a more practical note, our prison system in the US doesn't work. The United States has the sixth highest incarceration rate in the world, at 531 people per 100,000, and the largest prison and jail population in the world at 1,767,200 individuals. This is down from 2018, where the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world with 698 people incarcerated per 100,000. Of those incarcerated, 47% of federal prisoners serving time (as of September 2016) were convicted of a drug offense, not a violent crime, and half of all persons incarcerated under state jurisdiction are incarcerated for non-violent offenses.

And our rates of incarceration disproportionately impact certain communities but not others. As of 2018, Black males accounted for 34% of the total male prison population and Hispanic males accounted for 24% of the prison population, despite the fact that they are only 13% and 16% of the US male population respectively, and despite the fact that white men are as likely to commit crimes as their non-white counterparts. 16% of transgender adults have been in prison and/or jail, compared to 2.7% of all adults. 49% of state prisoners and 40% of federal prisoners are diagnosed with or show symptoms of mental illness, and about 30% of individuals without pre-existing mental health issues develop them while incarcerated. People who enter the criminal justice system are also overwhelmingly poor. About 66% of people detained in jails report annual incomes under $12,000 prior to their arrest. Another study found that incarcerated people had a median annual income of $19,185 prior to their incarceration, which is 41% less than non-incarcerated people of similar ages.

Despite all of this, prisons are not actually lowering violent crime rates, and they may be increasing the frequency of certain non-violent crimes. Within three years of being released, 67% of ex-prisoners are re-arrested, and 52% are re-incarcerated. Prison, parole, and probation operations generate an $81 billion annual cost to U.S. taxpayers, with an additional $63 billion for policing- money that could go into preventing crime by building and supporting communities, education, and helping people meet their basic needs. And that's not even discussing the horrific way we treat people who are incarcerated and the way incarceration impacts health, well-being, and life prospects for those who experience it, or how incarceration impacts families and communities.

That said, obviously, abolition is not something that can happen overnight. There are many incremental changes to our current prison system that need to be made before abolition is even a possibility, and many non-carceral systems that need to be put in place in order to support a restorative or transformative justice system. It's not an easy path, especially because there are so many people who have a vested interest in keeping this system as it is. But I think we have a moral obligation to take those steps and to fight for a system that is better than the one we currently have.

I'll leave it here for now, but I'm super happy to talk more about this subject if you all are interested. I know it's complicated and seems counter-intuitive, and so I would love to help make things easier to understand if I can.

[kanyefestworld]

#YE24: Love is Not Enough

When Ye made this post last month, there was widespread celebration from Ye fans on twitter. They talked about how he was "back" and how we had held him down through this "era." As if anything had actually changed. This response which we first thought was ironic was entirely sincere on their part and they got indignant with media sources treating it skeptically, like it was a joke (which it was!).

This showed how out-of-touch these folks are. The most important part was Ye re-emphasizing that he himself is a semite of color, however these "anti-woke" folks do not understand how much damage & ignorance is spread by their holocaust, pandemic, and homophobia denying community that commiserates daily on how to control womens' bodies via banning them from medical care.

And they think a joke about 21 Jump Street (not even You People, the actual Jonah Hill movie from 2023 about relations between white semites & black semites that quotes YE extensively) means that all is forgiven. Let's all follow Ye's supposed advisor Ali Alexander while Ali tweets about how queer ppl are responsible for the apocalypse. Yay!

It turns out Ali Alexander himself has been ex-communicated for inappropriately messaging teenage boys. And he publicly demeaned everyday queer people while he himself lived out an abusive, harmful lifestyle. This kind of con is often pointed out by queer activists, and we're not here to psychoanalyze him. But the people who followed him? Who couldn't tell that this man is a professional misleader, that the company he runs with are career grifters? They're exactly as gullible and impressionable and dangerous as everyone says.

But we want them to be useful. If #YE24 showed us anything it's that these people need purpose. We'd like to give it to them, via Ye's actual platform. How? And what is Ye's actual platform, anyway? Nazism? "Racism isn't real"? Banning abortions & gay ppl? No.

#HEAL: Ye's platform calls for a better justice. Because KANYEFEST is not some guy using metaphors and evasive language to appear virtuous we're going to be crystal clear: what Ye demands is Transformative Justice. Donda is an anti-prison album, the release parties were metaphors for Ye being Larry Hoover trapped in a cell. For Jesus Is King Ye toured prisons shouting about abolishing slavery & jail in the revolution.

The kind of communication and community he calls for is the same that Leftist activists invoke: abolition. They have the same failures of modeling justice that is transparent and doesn't "throw people away" for doing harm. Because as the Chicago Reader put it when profiling our TJ work: the hard work of healing from violence doesn't get done if everyone doesn't share it.

Ye supporters, especially ones who enabled and empowered Ali (and who have no idea where he is or who might be enabling him now) must give to our survivor fund. They've been donating to grifters and manipulators in his network that did nothing but make our problems worse and exacerbate division. Our survivor fund is the first of its kind and the way to model justice moving forward. Abusers like Ali are known for suing their victims to quell further reprisal. All the moral support in the world doesn't pay for the legal and medical bills, not to mention folks' general well being that's shattered by such acts - especially when the abuser is in a place of power.

Ali will need his own accountability process. It will require the participation of the people who have supported him, as well as advocates for those he harmed. Folks like Nick Fuentes (who reportedly "knew") are in his "pods" and responsible. We, as #YE24, will do what others can't. We will be accountable. That's real love.

#GROW: During his presidential rally YE talked about farming and the energy potential of the earth itself. He moved out to Wyoming and grew food, promising to end hunger and homelessness. As black farmers from the southside who feed and house people for free to build utopia- we don't have to wait for Ye. His job was to inspire us. And he went above and beyond, even releasing a video with mayoral candidate Amara Enyia and the late Virgil Abloh where they plotted to build shelters in our city and completely revolutionize living as we know it, overnight.

#cynical people dismissed this work but we didn't. We are Ye's vision. Before he went on 2022's anti-caucasian semitic crusade Ye promised, again, to build farms that were easily accessible to all. That didn't happen, but we are already doing that. These alt-right Ye fans don't want to believe racism is real, unless being practiced by white jewish folk, but his whole point was the disparity between semites of color and those without (melanin). To support Kyrie Irving, to support Jay Electronica, to support Ye and Donda we will complete (Louis) Martin Luther (the) King's dream of equitable housing on the south and west sides of our city. And then all cities.

#CONNECT: While Ye has worn masks and mourned our people publicly, #cynical conservatives are creating chaos by spreading pandemic misinformation. Whether it's about the efficacy of masks, the risks of infection or vaccine lies- their rhetoric is out here getting people killed. We, unlike others, are united in ending the virus via scientific means. That means staying home. The same plan from day one, as variants and violence have spiraled out of control there has only been one solution.

Ye once said: "you should quit your job to this." As employers waffle between at-home work and banning masks, we support everyone from the disabled to those who perceive little to no danger.

When we stay home, we will protect the environment and ourselves. The world will never be the same because we'll achieve that utopian dream we all sensed when the world first "shut down." Everyone on whatever political side went on strikes, but never the one that mattered. The #COVIDstrike to #StayHome & end the pandemic.

#CELEBRATE: It's been extremely bizarre to watch Ye supporters tear down his creative support system for the last two decades for a couple of folks he just met. While KANYEFEST has done events highlighting and raising reparations with the work of artists like KiD Cudi, Jay-Z, Drake & Eminem the average Ye twitter stan will degrade them at a moment's notice. But if Ali or any Nick followers were to praise Hitler or some other nigh irredeemable figure of widespread murder, these folks would consider it harmful to give any pushback.

Poll after poll, Nick & Ali torched the most famous black entertainers in the world. Until this week, when G.O.O.D. Music finally triumphed over two political cult leaders who do no actual community service. We searched Chance The Rapper's activism work supporting black women (#HEAL), feeding the poor (#GROW) and organizing labor (#CONNECT) to save the world for everyone (#CELEBRATE). All of that you could see in his Black Star Line festival alone, but you can go back years and there is no such work from these neocons. These new conservatives who claim to be Based and really get humanity and universal love don't do any work for the community unless it's bailing a J6 terrorist out of jail. They don't do any work concerning consent and sexual health unless it's part of an overarching conspiracy aiming to take rights from the marginalized. They want to control women's bodies and deny genocide. They want to call it love.

This is a message: Love is not enough.

For the white male student crying that he is the most persecuted of them all because of his loving religion. Who describes his own work as a "campus grift." Who sets up debate tables to get proved wrong about race but has never done a food drive. To his enablers, advisors & graphic designers:

We tsk tsk our own timelines of misguided "leftists" but at the very least, the way they support direct action selflessly is completely unparalleled by the so-called right. Conservatives are extremely active but their timelines tell the tale of what they truly care about: reactionary confrontation. If you all care about children, fair labor, the truth and community... then from now on when we ask what Ye-inspired activists accomplished this week we don't want to see viral gotcha videos and fake merch. We want to see reimbursed survivors, open conversation in service of transformation, long-owed reparations, safe evacuations and black-led celebration. Anything else is hateration, no matter your cult's holleration.

[ms-demeanor]

I believe in a lot of things but because I’m not gung-ho about murder and the destruction of the system, you’ll always say I don’t believe strongly enough. I know there’s nothing I can do to get you to respect me, I just want an answer to the question: where are these new, lefty voters going to come from, and why is “preventing total collapse into fascism” not a good enough reason for them to vote? To do this really minor thing? Why do you all default to guillotines?

And, like, as far as I can tell, your position is that I should die, everyone I love should die, all the fucking poor and queer and black people who live in this red state hellhole should die, so that you can build the beautiful anarchist future in our ashes and maybe call us “martyrs.” It’s cold fucking comfort. We have no chance of winning a fight and you want to force us into a fight because you “believe in something” and are therefore morally right, I guess.

"As far as I can tell, your position is that I should die, everyone I love should die, all the fucking poor and queer and black people who live in this red state hellhole should die, so that you can build the beautiful anarchist future in our ashes and maybe call us “martyrs.”

If that's what you can tell about my political positions then I don't have to respond to anything you're saying because I am *very* vocal about my positions and they are mostly "form parallel structures" and "join unions." (I will respond anyway because I'm a contentious fuck)

@politicalmissdemeanor and @how-to-do-activism are were I store my politics reblogs. You can go check them out. On both of those you will find several reblogs of the essay "against the logic of the guillotine," which I reblog frequently because my OTHER big political stance is prison abolition and prison abolition doesn't exactly sit comfortably alongside the idea of *any* executions; suggesting that I - or most anarchists - default to guillotines suggests that you're not familiar with many anarchists. It is, of course, not your responsibility to be familiar with many anarchists, but if you're going to accuse me of wanting you dead and a utopia built on your ashes then it IS your responsibility to be familiar with *me.*

Also I think that everyone should be clear, when I talk about "fully automated luxury gay space communism" that is a tongue-in-cheek way of discussing a post-scarcity world. I don't think we're actually going to *get* fully automated luxury gay space communism, but I also think that scarcity in the modern era is largely constructed and political, and that is something that should be addressed.

I mention that because utopianism is controversial among anarchists and if you see me talking about "in the future anarchist utopia" you should read that in the same tone that I am using in discussions about "fully automated luxury gay space communism." I don't think we're going to *get* a future anarchist utopia (and I actually think the idea of utopias specifically is harmful) however I do believe a better world is possible and that people should work toward that.

But what it sounds like is you've looked through my blog for the past week only and see me talking about the democratic party attempting to retain white, educated suburban voters instead of reaching out voters on the left or attempting to retain them and have extrapolated my entire political philosophy from a single paragraph and a link to an AP story.

So, point by point:

I believe in a lot of things but because I’m not gung-ho about murder and the destruction of the system, you’ll always say I don’t believe strongly enough.

Then you should probably base your arguments on why you support the system and think it works instead of building an argument out of "well it's better than what republicans want." I clearly exist within this system and I have posts about how it could be improved (postal banking, automatic voter registration, ranked preference voting, universal ID) even though I don't particularly want to perpetuate it.

You don't act like you actually believe what you're saying, you act like you're clinging to it out of desperation. You are not positively arguing for your system, you are holding it up as a shield against something worse. I'd recommend taking some time to sit down and think about what you consider the merits of this system are. "Checks and balances" are one of the things that people seem to like about the American political system; I will agree that it's good that presidents are not kings and can't just will law into existence (it's part of why I'm so critical about the use of executive orders!), and that a legislative system doesn't have to be terrible. However my criticism, as an anarchist, is that these checks and balances don't actually seem to be checking or balancing anything and that presidents *as a concept* are bad and there are probably ways to make this system more democratic while still protecting people from the tyranny of the majority so perhaps if you want to keep the system going you should investigate what ability you have, as a supporter of the system, to change those things. (the thing is, you don't actually have the ability to change those things and it's part of why I don't think the system works).

I know there’s nothing I can do to get you to respect me,

Friend. Buddy. Pal. I think that all humans are inherently worthy of respect. What I am never going to *agree with* is your political system.

I just want an answer to the question: where are these new, lefty voters going to come from, and why is “preventing total collapse into fascism” not a good enough reason for them to vote? To do this really minor thing?

I'm not sure if you're aware of this but, as time passes children stop being children and eventually gain rights as individuals, including the right to vote.

And actually, I am arguing that leftists and young voters already ARE voting for you, but they're doing so because - as you have stated - the other choice is fascism.

But "vote to prevent fascism" is not a party platform and it is a concession to let the fascists control the conversation. It enables the ratchet effect. Republicans get into power and drag politics further right and then Democrats run against them on the bare promise to "hold the line." Progressive candidates within the party rarely get support from the party because of the need to keep the centrist voters, to "heal the soul of America," and when progressive democrats DO get elected they are often blamed for falling approval ratings or low voter turnout or people switching parties.

I have been explicit about the fact that I voted for democrats; that was the harm reductionist stance in 2020, right? "Hold your nose, vote like hell, then hold their feet to the fire." You see why this doesn't actually work, right? Because I can't hold their feet to the fire. Because all I can say is "support policies I believe in or you'll lose my vote" but they don't have to worry about losing my vote because my alternative is to vote for the lesser evil or "not voting is a vote for republicans." So either I was going to vote for them anyway or I wasn't going to vote at all, so they don't have to give a shit about my vote, which is why many anarchists see voting at all as harmful.

You are saying "not-fascism is good enough, I have to accept what I'm given and be grateful that it isn't worse" and honestly take a look at what you're saying. That's slop. That's dreck. They are feeding you garbage and that should be more radicalizing than it has been. You deserve better than that. EVERYONE deserves better than that.

Anyway yeah the new voters are going to be young people. Young people have historically participated in elections at a lower rate than the rest of the population and your job as a supporter of electoralism is to convince them that voting for democrats will do more than not voting. That's kind of a hard sell when the democratic party pitch since at least 2017 has been "stop the fascist creep in America" but fascism has kept right on creeping (which I don't think is the democrats' fault, per se, just that they don't actually have the power to do anything to stop it so it's a bad pledge to campaign on).

Well, and also this:

"stop fascism by voting for dems" is also a hard sell when you can't raise the minimum wage but you can increase funding for police.

Here's the thing: you've got your votes. Leftists hold their noses and young people are voting in historically high numbers, and are generally voting for democrats. There you go. You've got the votes. People ARE doing this tiny thing. And democrats are still yelling at leftists and young people to vote harder while courting center votes.

Who are you mad at? Who do *you* think is not voting? How much do you think it's worthwhile to compromise your political goals to get their votes? Clearly the democratic party thinks that centrist suburban white people aren't voting for them and they're willing to compromise enough that "better than the other guy" is a platform.

Why do you all default to guillotines?

I've been over this but I don't think that support for execution is a coherent anti-state position. Again, here is Against the Logic of the Guillotine.

And, like, as far as I can tell, your position is that I should die, everyone I love should die, all the fucking poor and queer and black people who live in this red state hellhole should die, so that you can build the beautiful anarchist future in our ashes and maybe call us “martyrs.”

Did you *look* at any of my political positions? Or did you make up an anarchist to get mad at?

I've gotten yelled at kind of a lot for "well obviously your politics state that my people don't have value and should die" from people who seem to have never interacted with me or my politics. Do you think that all anarchists are anti-civ? Do you think that doctors and factories won't exist in an anarchist system? Have you ever looked at ANY mutual aid projects? Are you not aware of black anarchism? You know what I'm just going to post a quote from that link on anti-civ views because that seems to be the center of a lot of the belief that anarchists want all queer and disabled and marginalized people dead:

Civilisation comes with many, many problems but it is better than the alternative. The challenge for anarchists is in transforming civilisation to a form that is without hierarchy, or imbalances of power or wealth [...] To do this we need modern technology to clean our water, pump away and process our waste and inoculate or cure people of the diseases of high population density. With only 10 million people on the earth you can shit in the woods providing you keep moving on. With 6 billion those who shit in the woods are shitting in the water they and those around them will have to drink.

Of all your off-the wall statements in these asks this is the one that makes it the most clear that you don't know who I am or what my political positions are and are just yelling at a stranger.

anyway, back to your asks:

it’s cold fucking comfort. We have no chance of winning a fight and you want to force us into a fight because you “believe in something” and are therefore morally right, I guess.

I think there's a broad misapprehension that all anarchists are militant insurrectionist anarchists. I think that this is because most anarchists are operating from the belief that the existing system cannot be reformed, which people often interpret to mean "it must therefore be torn down in a brief and violent revolution and replaced only with the system that I say will work best."

I don't believe in reforming the system (though if you've got it and you want to yell about improving people's lives you might as well make it better but that is not what I'm putting my energy toward because even a united states with universal healthcare, postal banking, and constitutionally protected abortion is still a hierarchical power structure that will serve capital and its interests) but I'm also not a fan of violent revolutions (I am not 100% critical of them either; sometimes revolution is self preservation - the world is complicated and it's hard to model history and regional differences on different places in different times).

What I am a fan of is creating local networks of people to do things in their community for themselves, without anyone's permission or approval. I'm a fan of meal shares, I'm a fan of mutual aid, I'm a fan of libraries and free stores and community gardens set up in empty lots that nobody gave you permission to use.

If you want an example of this with something where a real-world need was not being met by a government and individuals took initiative to address it, look at the FIRST Collective in Columbus. Shelters were not providing adequate housing so a group of people have worked together to create a safe, sheltered environment for people who were not being served by the system. Is the solution ideal (where ideal is 'permanent safe housing with no limitations on residents')? No. Is the solution better than what was being provided by the state (limited-stay shelters with restrictions on possessions, pets, couples staying together, and whether residents would be locked in at night)? For the people in that camp, yes. It was a better solution. Does it replace the shelter system? No. Does it suggest an alternative to what is provided by the state, and by its mere existence illustrate that what the state provides is not enough? Yes.

Is this sort of thing possible on a large scale? And possible to improve on a large scale? Yes. Is it possible to do that *tomorrow*? No. Is it possible to *start* tomorrow so that you have a better place to work from in a week or a month or a year? Yes.

I am tired. I am tired, you are tired, we are all tired. My back hurts and I don't get enough sleep and if shipments of certain medications were stopped for three months my spouse would die. Quickly and inescapably. I don't know who you think I am, but I am not somebody who is shouting about guillotines and advocating for the immediate overthrow of society in all its forms.

I think the world is broken and needs to be fixed. Do I think that burning down everything wrong with the world and picking through the cinders to build something better is a good idea? No. I think it is possible to seek revolution without wholesale destruction, and I don't think that you need to tear the world down to ashes in order to rebuild.

I'm not trying to raise a gallows, I'm trying to grow a garden. If you are looking at one of those things and seeing the other, that is a failure of your understanding, not of my philosophy.

Also if anybody wants to donate to the FIRST Collective this is their GoFundMe.

[hippeasantwitch]

Ah yes, grassroots community organizing (my Roman Empire).

So my grad school focus was social work as community organizing and building power at the community level. It’s a tricky business, the powers at be make our life VERY HARD at this level because the niche groups are generally drowned out by shinier and more centrist “non controversial” groups that can make leftist ideals sound like a pipe dream and scare folks from really good community work.

A few caveats:

-I’m American

-I live in a mid-size blue collar city

-I do work full time in the intercity as an in home social worker so yeah, I do have a front row seat to the shitshow that is *a society under capitalism*

A few tips for those who want to jump in, especially in a new place, and have it make actual sense for their life.

-Organizing and collective action needs diverse talents and folks who have different tasks. A lot of groups fuck up early on by making EVERYTHING a massive in person protest. Leftist circles can hold some ableist ideals in doing this and it usually leads to flash pan groups. Collective action is just that: a collective of our talents and abilities to create the world towards what we want to see. Things I’ve done that involved sitting at home that helped my fellow organizers includes: researching an issue or individual in power, sitting next to my phone in case I need to bail someone out of jail, giving food to those performing a sit in, creating posters, writing op eds for the local paper to get eyes on a current issue, writing a speech for a press conference, security planning, pretending to be a dullard to distract police, and educational webinar.

-big groups are good to get a handle on issues but truly the more local the better. If you aren’t plugged into your immediate community, quite honestly, what do you think you can accomplish outside of it and why should those folks trust you. I see this more with white saviors, but it’s a folly many get trapped in because the “I feel good about myself” rush comes in. One of the reasons local groups get less attention is they are not nearly as sexy, they usually can’t get as far politically as a group with massive backing BUT they are also the groups that really do the work that changes communities. If what you want is big policy change then sure, go to a big policy change advocacy group, but do expect them to want money more than your talent. Also any group with significant government funding usually isn’t even doing the work anymore as much as assuaging class guilt in a way that seems palatable to the rich. The smaller groups tend to be more adaptable to issues as they arise locally and usually you end up collaborating with other groups that focus on different issues because the overall goal is a more equitable community. Building power at a local level is really key to any major movement. Localized grassroots organizing also can be slow and difficult. You aren’t going to see results right away and sometimes you have to celebrate “wins” that feel like slaps in the face.

-if the group has no mission, focus, or can name an actual *thing* they want done then it’s probably a waste of time and even could be downright unsafe to get involved in. Unfocused and disorganized groups are just ammo for opposing sides to make mockeries of the movement and largely can create safety issues for organizers. For example, I’m part of Showing Up For Racial Justice. The broad issue is racial justice. Our focus is prison abolition and lowering incarceration rates. If a racial justice issue pops up we will support it, but our FOCUS is lowering mass incarceration and ultimately dismantling the entire carceral system. That’s a hefty task, but when you break it down into tangible actions (this election cycle, stopping this jail from opening up, improving prison medical care) you can see the path forward and celebrate wins. Sometimes you put a bandaid on the bigger issue for now to literally save lives in the moment while knowing the greater issue is still looming.

-the online toolkit, my child, my friend. Toolkits are online “guides” for the average person to start doing the work if they haven’t plugged into a group yet. It gives things you can do on your own, groups you can work with, and even sometimes pre written emails and other messaging for politicians. It’s worth noting that conservatives are fucking good at toolkits. I did a little look online and in the UK (since OP is from there) the Evangelical Alliance has a pretty beefed up toolkit on how the average pearl clutching mother can cyberbully politicians into hating trans people. This is an area that needs to be worked on because the conservatives have done a good job of it. In the US the toolkits for how to get books banned and Critical Race Theory are numerous amongst alt right and conservative groups.

-it takes time and it’s BRUTAL. Usually to really get a good grasp of the issues, you need time and relationship building and it is exhausting. Another reason local groups can suffer is people may not live somewhere long enough to even know this issue exists and that they can change it. Since societal structure is isolated and lonely, people don’t talk to each other to gain community and therefore create communal power naturally. Expect to be with a hearty group of 10 people, a big event happens and it skyrockets to 150, and then three weeks later since society didn’t fundamentally change we are down to 15 people. It’s actually the reason local groups need committed folks, they have a limited group to pull from and numbers matter when it comes time to sign bills and create policies. If a politician sees most of his voting constituents want something he’ll do it, not because he cares, but because he has some sort of emotional problem where strangers voting for him are his only source of happiness.

-and lastly, the local arm of the national group. This may be an American thing (we are fucking enormous), but many national advocacy groups have local chapters. It gives a local focus on a bigger issue and works so each group has national support if things heat up. I’m from Buffalo NY and when we had the racially charged mass shooting, our local chapters were first on the scene and then national support came in. However national support is short term and really just give attention to the issue to drum up local support. The local groups are still there two years later. This is another reason local is my favorite: they take the time to really see the change through.

Anyways this is the only non Neil Gaiman post that’s come up on my tumblr in like a month (it’s the ant emoji, I joined a fake ant colony on Facebook and my algorithm is fucked) and it’s actually something I give a shit about, so enjoy you chronically online nerds.

🐜

You're absolutely right - I don't engage in as much collective action as I should or as I'd like to these days. I've found it surprisingly hard to fit into my life since becoming self-employed and moving to a new city, but I can feel a gap in my soul where "doing something good" used to be. It's probably not helped by the fact my day job was in the charity sector (definitely, tangibly helping people) and now I write nerd shit and make niche role-playing games (creating luxury products in an oversatutated market).

It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I'm looking for ways to get more involved, but it's hard to find something I can actually commit to. I don't engage with activism online anymore because it was really bad for me and more of a distraction than anything effective, so maybe a local group I can volunteer with? I'm thinking I need to pick one cause, and then choose one very specific issue within that cause to focus on, y'know? Like, it's so easy to get overwhelmed about climate change because polar bears are dying and I'm very powerless to do anything about that. But maybe there's some local species of butterfly that's less charismatic than polar bears, but equally endangered and maybe I can do something about that. Those butterflies deserve to be saved just as much as the polar bears do, and I've come to believe that little, local wins add up to bigger global wins much more effectively than tweeting and call-out posts do. So I guess, right now, I'm looking around for my local endangered butterfly.

[salcristina]

how can young people help support the mad rights movement?

hello anon!

I think it's great just to be aware that people's needs for their own well-being, are often radically different than how doctors and psy-professionals want them to be - a prime example is how autistic people have fought for acceptance and accommodations, while many professionals have used behavioral "therapies" to try to force them to make eye contact or stop stimming or otherwise be "normal."

Sometimes it makes a big difference just to let people around you know that you believe them, they're the expert on their own experience, and you understand that forced/coerced treatment is always an injustice and never their fault.

Maybe see if you can find out about non-coercive resources in your area, like "peer-run" respite houses or drop-in groups. (The "peer" language often has a lot to with getting state funding, and does still imply some messed-up things about who is and isn't *our equals*) These are voluntary places where people can stay, if they're in crisis or at risk of hospitalization, and leave whenever they want - generally run by other "consumers, survivors, or ex-patients", not by clinicians.

The above is an example of people choosing to operate somewhat *within* the "mental health" system, to get state funding (SAMHSA) to run voluntary/non-coercive programs. Many other psych survivors / mad folks don't want to associate their activism with the state or medical system - they want to build more support for mad/neurodivergent rights wherever they stand, within their spiritual communities or LGBTQ activist groups or call prison abolitionists' attention to why abolition must also include psychiatric incarceration.

Some amazing things I've seen Madpeople autonomously do for each other, is raise funds for lawyers to get someone's court-ordered commitment overturned, or get each other housing in another state to escape. If you're considering what resources you can personally offer someone in their struggle for freedom, please please consider your boundaries first and don't ever feel bad about telling someone there's no more you can do - sometimes we can't actually let people live in our apartment or take all their suicidal phone calls in the middle of the night or whatever. On the legal side of things, it's worth looking at how laws vary between states - for instance, while Connecticut still locks people up in forced inpatient settings, they do not have forced outpatient treatment.

Like autistic self-advocacy groups, the Hearing Voices Network has also tried to reframe experiences that doctors called "psychosis" - running confidential support groups where people can define these things for themselves. ADAPT (the disability justice group) has done a lot of good work to fight institutionalization and get people the home-care they need. I believe that right now MindFreedom is trying to expand its Shield Project which has run human rights alerts and public pressure campaigns for people facing psychiatric abuse. Oh and don't ever meet up with Dan Fisher he sexually harasses people.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

On May 25, a 46-year-old Black man named George Floyd was killed in Minnesota by a police officer who kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes while three other police officers stood by. In the hours and days and weeks following, protesters filled streets around the world, demanding an end to anti-Black police brutality. As part of the Maclean’s Live series, Desmond Cole, journalist, activist and author of 2020’s The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power, hosted a roundtable discussion about systemic racism in Canada and whether this moment will result in long-lasting change. Joining him were Esi Edugyan, author of the Giller Prize-winning novels Half-Blood Blues and Washington Black; Robyn Maynard, a Vanier scholar, Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto and award-winning author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada From Slavery to the Present; Syrus Marcus Ware, a Vanier scholar, Ph.D. student at York University, visual artist, community activist, researcher, youth advocate, and educator; and Ian Williams, a poet and novelist, professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia and the author of the Giller Prize-winning novel Reproduction. Cole, Edugyan and Williams also contributed to the Maclean’s series “Letters to America,” which was published on June 4. This transcript has been edited and condensed.

Q: In the last few weeks, we’ve been seeing things like the release of prisoners from jails in Canada. We’ve been seeing the growing calls for police abolition, which are louder in the mainstream than I can ever remember. And people feel like this might signal a hopeful shift. Syrus, having done this work for so long, how do you feel about this current public discourse and, in some cases, the public policy shifts that we’re seeing happen in Canada?

Syrus Marcus Ware: Yeah, I mean, this is such an exciting time. As someone who’s been an abolitionist for 25 years, never would I have thought that it would be so taken up in the mainstream. And we’ve got to be careful of that, and make sure that it doesn’t get co-opted. But I think what we’re seeing right now is this sort of rapid revolution in people’s consciousness, where they’re recognizing that hey, wait a minute, what exactly are the police doing right? They’re not particularly good at resolving crisis or conflict in a good way. Those [interventions] are often resulting in fatalities. They’re not particularly good at solving crimes and actually reducing crime rates in our streets. They’re not resolving harm in our communities. They’re not supporting people who are in psychiatric distress.

So people are starting to think, okay, well, what would we rather imagine? And that’s where the abolitionist dreaming comes in. We start to imagine that we could have these communities that are actually rooted in safety and security, and social justice. We could build something different. We could build something better.

Q: Robyn, in the advocacy to abolish policing that we’re witnessing right now, Black people assert that policing is a relationship of dominance rather than one of care, safety and protection. You’ve written about this relationship of dominance between Black people and the Canadian government and how it extends well beyond policing. Can you talk a little bit about this, please?

Robyn Maynard: Absolutely. The fact that we’re seeing these large revolts, uprisings [and] organizing moments all across North America and around the world right now shows us that of course it’s about policing. But also, if we look to the context of a pandemic in Canada, we see that it’s Black and Latino agricultural workers who are being exposed and becoming ill, gravely ill, at vastly disproportionate rates; it’s undocumented Haitian women at the forefront as personal care workers who may face deportation after exposing themselves to this virus to protect white people in this society. We see the ways racism has been embedded not only into policing but [also with] incarceration, in terms of immigration detention, where we had Black migrants undertake an eight-day hunger strike because they were being exposed to COVID-19. It’s also always been part of child welfare, of our education system, of our immigration system. This institutional anti-Black racism is something that we’re still very much reckoning with today. And when people are out demanding an end to racial injustice, that goes well beyond policing. It’s really about who has access to a decent life and who does not.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada @abpoli

[coralei]

Yeah once you get past the surface level idea of "make prisons not exist" there's a ton of discussion and resources about what to actually do. My understanding generally is that you approach the problem from the root. Why does crime happen? (Overwhelmingly the biggest reason is poverty.) Why do people believe that we need prisons? (Fear, unfamiliarity, trauma)

How do we start addressing those issues in our communities without police? By giving people better options. By building up systems of support and lifting communities out of poverty and precarity.

The prison system is a racist machine that fucking eats people and crushes families and shatters community while being incredibly fascist the whole way. Basically anything other than locking people up in our meatgrinder prison system is more effective at healing people and the community and preventing harm. And you show people that by showing that every single thing the police are "supposed to do" can be done better by replacing them or putting resources into healing the community. Wouldn't you rather have a trained social worker show up if you have a meltdown in public versus an officer with a gun?

There's so much to cover, but the gist is that the way to prison abolition is to put stop pouring massive amounts of money into military grade state violence via the police and use those resources instead to address the societal problems that lead to crime in the first place. Services to help people in mental crisis without bringing a gun into the situation. Help with childcare and feeding families. Access to transportation, community, jobs. You could do SO MUCH with the billions of dollars that go to the racist, fascist arm of state violence and make it into positive outcomes.

A great read about this topic is Becoming Abolitionists by Derecka Purnell

It's incremental. It doesn't happen all at once. But there is a way to go, there are things we can do. We might not see the end of police in our lifetime but we can sure as hell fight to make things better along the way.

the problem with 'abolitionist' thought in general is that it produces; principally, not practical policies to be implemented by a communist party, or revolutionary committee, or worker state; but immaterial & utopian axioms like 'in a perfect world, things like this would not exist', which is variously true, because this (which exists) does not, in fact, exist in a perfect world

[theexistentiallyqueer]

It’s been a while, what with me being being more active on Twitter these days, but I had some thoughts churning around in my brain and this felt like a better place to post them rather than threading them over there.

This is a post about Persona 5 and restorative justice. Before I go any further, though, a note: this is meta about restorative justice and prison abolition as ethical philosophies only, how it can be expressed/structured in works of fiction, i.e., Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal, and what the importance of doing so is.

I should also note that I am not a philosopher, a legal scholar, or an activist, I just like to read, and I strongly encourage you to look into the topics I’m discussing in this essay. If you want specific recommendations you can DM me; again, this being meta about a video game, I think linking those titles here would diminish their importance regarding what they’re actually about.

Ready? Okay. Let’s get started.

what is restorative justice?

‘Restorative justice’ is a concept in ethical and legal philosophy that holds itself in contrast to two other kinds of justice: punitive and carceral. Punitive justice is justice as punishment, i.e., an eye for an eye, while carceral justice involves justice as the confinement of criminal offenders. While both have heavy overlaps with one another, they’re distinct in the generality vs the specificity of their outcome: punitive justice can involve the death penalty, property seizure, permanent loss of rights, etc., carceral justice refers strictly just to the incarceration of criminal offenders in institutional facilities (jails, prisons, etc.).

Restorative justice, in contrast, roots itself in the understanding of closing a circle: the best and most holistic way to heal harm one person inflicts on another is to have the person who inflicted the harm make reparations to the person they hurt in a tangible and meaningful way. This can take many forms, and if you’re passingly familiar with restorative justice already, you may have heard about it involving the offender and the victim meeting face-to-face. This does happen sometimes. Personal acknowledgement of the harm you’ve inflicted on someone is important, and direct apologies are important, but these need to also be coupled with actions. The person behind a drunk hit-and-run of a parent could help put their orphaned child through school, or a domestic abuser could be made to take counseling and go on to help deter domestic violence in other households, and so on. 

The vast majority of states across the world use punitive/carceral models, though small-scale community trials of restorative justice have been attempted, to varying degrees of success. No one is going to argue that it would be easy to implement, but it is important. Restorative justice is about recognizing that crime, specifically crimes against other people, are fundamentally still about two people: the perpetrator and the victim. And we have to look beyond the words perpetrator and victim to recognize that they are both human beings and challenge ourselves to build a society where our concept of justice means healing hurts instead of retaliation.

It’s not easy, but it is possible. It requires changing your own perceptions of justice and humanity and society and the big wide entire world to have the kind of mindset that allows it to be possible. But it is possible, and I know that from personal experience, because it’s my own mindset and I’ve been through trauma too.

prison abolition and the god of control

Persona 5 has an authority problem. By which I mean, Persona 5 has a problem challenging authority in any way that functionally matters.

The game is drenched in heavy-handed prison imagery, from jail cells to wardens to striped jumpsuits to cuffs and chains to an electric chair. Throughout the long build-up of the main storyline we’re treated to a confectionery delight of punitive justice, stick-it-to-the-man justice: the Thieves find a bad guy who coincidentally has personally hurt or is actively hurting one of their members, and they take it upon themselves to make the bad guy miserable and then send him off to jail. By the end of the arc you’re meant to feel like you accomplished something heroic, that by locking someone up you’re balancing the scales of justice. In the Kamoshida arc Ann even frames this in restorative justice terms, telling him he doesn’t deserve the easy way out of ending his own life and needs to live with his mistakes and repent, but he’s still sent off to jail regardless and Ann and Shiho are left to struggle through the trauma he put them through without anyone to really support them. This repeats itself, over and over: Madarame, Kaneshiro, Okumura, Shido--expose the bad guy, bring him low, publicly shame him, and then send him away (or, in Okumura’s case, watch him die on live TV to riotous cheers from the public).

And what does this all accomplish, in the end? You get to the Depths of Mementos on Christmas Eve to find the souls of humanity locked away in apathy, surrendered willingly to the control of the state, and your targets right there with them, thanking you for helping them return to a place where they don’t have to think of other people as people any more than they did before. In prison, they can forget that they are human beings and that all of the rest of the people in the world are too. The Phantom Thieves march upstairs and defeat the Gnostic manifestation of social control, that being that masquerades itself with lies as the true Biblical god. And then you go back home and the adults tell you that everything is okay now, the system itself isn’t rotten, and you just have to sit back, stop actively participating in the world, and let them take the reins.

It’s one of Persona 5′s most ironic conceits. “Prison abolition....good?” the player asks, and Atlus swats you on the hand and says, “Silly kids, prison abolition completely unnecessary because you can trust the state to not fuck up anyone’s lives anymore ever.” All while using prison imagery to present prisons as institutions inherently divorced from what might constitute actual justice.

Prisons exist because hierarchies exist, and so long as hierarchies exist, inequality will exist and people will commit harm who otherwise likely would not. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too, Atlus. You can’t frame prisons as an inherently unjust institution used to control people because you didn’t do anything to get rid of the hierarchy. You just gave the hydra a few new heads.

restorative justice and rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is Persona 5′s favorite buzz word, and for all that it’s used the game never really clearly defines what it’s supposed to mean. Yaldabaoth uses it as a euphemism to describe the process by which he creates his ideal puppet, but Yaldabaoth bad, and by the end of the game, Yaldabaoth dead. We get barely any time with Igor after that for Igor to define rehabilitation properly on his terms, which is notable in that Igor is the one who’s supposed to be the spiritual mentor of the wild card within the Persona universe. 

We can only infer from that that it’s the player who’s meant to define what rehabilitation is by the end of the game, but because the game fails to take any concrete stance on its themes that could in any way undermine the idea that society isn’t functionally broken, it’s hard to figure out what conclusion we’re supposed to draw. As I stated above, the game immediately walks back any insinuations that it’s the institutions themselves that are rotten by having Sae and Sojiro step in and assume responsibility for making the world just by continuing to operate within the rules society itself has created. If you can’t beat them....join them?

If anything the closest we can get to coming up with a definitive understanding of what the game wants us to understand rehabilitation as is when the protagonist is in juvie. During those months we’re treated to an extended cutscene of all of your maxed out confidants taking action to get you out of jail, but because you can trigger this scene even if you haven’t maxed out all of your confidants, and because the outcome (getting out of juvie) is the same even if you haven’t maxed out any besides Sae, then we’re right back where we started.

But that cutscene still has a sliver of meaning to it despite it being largely window-dressing, because the game does push, over and over, the argument that it’s through your bonds with others, through building a community, that you’ll rehabilitate yourself and find true justice.

And that’s what restorative justice is about: community.

the truth: uncovering it vs deciding it

I can’t find enough words to convey how infuriating it is that Atlus comes so close to telling a restorative justice narrative and then completely drops the ball on displaying it at all in Goro’s character arc.

Goro’s concept of justice is fundamentally punitive, the textbook “you hurt me so I’m going to hurt you back.” In doing so he goes on to hurt a whole bunch of other people: orphaning Futaba, orphaning Haru, triggering a mental shutdown in Ohya’s partner Kayo, and also killing countless millions other instances of mental shutdowns, psychotic breakdowns, bribery, and scandal that caused people material harm and, in a handful of cases, killed them.

Yes, Shido gave him the gun, but Goro pulled the trigger. And in a restorative justice framework, you don’t bypass that fact: you actively interrogate it.

There’s been a lot of really great meta about what the circumstances of Goro’s life were like, including the Japanese foster care system, the social stigma of bastardy in Japan and the impact it has on an illegitimate child’s outcomes, and the ways in which Shido groomed and manipulated Goro into being the tool of violence he made him into. These things aren’t excuses for what Goro does, however: they’re explanations for it. They are the complex social issues that create a situation where a child feels his best choice, indeed maybe his only choice, is to take the gun being offered to him and use it on other people. If you want to prevent more kids from slipping through cracks into those kinds of situations, you need to understand the social ills that made those cracks appear in the first place and you need to fix them. Otherwise there will always be another kid, and another recruiter, and another bad choice, and another gun. Systemic problems require systemic solutions.

Even so, none of that bypasses the fact that it was Goro’s hand on that gun, that it was Goro who performed the physical action of killing Wakaba’s and Okumura’s shadows, and that, as a result of Goro’s direct actions, Wakaba and Okumura died. You can say Okumura deserved it all you like, but Haru doesn’t deserve to be an orphan. Haru deserved to repair her relationship with her father. Okumura deserved the chance to learn and make direct, material amends to the employees he hurt and the families of those who died on his watch, and they deserved to have him give them a better way to heal.

But this isn’t about the loss of Okumura making amends to his family or his victims: this is about Goro Akechi, and the fact that even in Royal his fraught relationship with Haru and Futaba is never explored, barely even addressed. There’s not even any personal, direct acknowledgement from him of the pain he put them through.

You can say he doesn’t care, and that’s fine that he doesn’t care. And it is. He’s a fictional character, this is a video game, they are anime characters.

But Persona 5 flirts with the idea of restorative justice and never fully explores it, and it’s a weaker game for that.

the thin place, the veil between worlds, the line in the sand

This is the last part, I promise, and I’ll be short and brief here, because the truth is that none of this matters, at least not in the way that you think. Persona 5 is a story. It’s a lie that we buy. It’s all zeroes and ones and electrical signals and optical images on a blank black screen.

But art can be powerful. Art is like magic, the deepest magic, the oldest kind. We human beings are creatures of art and poetry, of images and patterns, of music and words. Good art, really good art, can allow us to explore new ideas and critique our internal assumptions about how the world works.

No, fiction doesn’t affect reality, not the way that you think it does.

But if you’ve gotten this far, I just got you to read an essay on restorative justice and prison abolition in regards to a Japanese role-playing game, and that is something to think about.

How do you define rehabilitation? What kind of justice do you believe in? Is the way you conceive those things really the best way?

And how much more interesting could a story that challenges those concepts be?

[a4bl]

Asians 4 Black Lives: Uplift Black Resistance, Help Build Black Power

ETA: A previous version of this post stated that two of the officers involved in George Floyd’s killing were of Asian descent. We have not yet been able to confirm the race of the second officer and so have updated that below.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight by four Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officers. This gut-wrenching tragedy, in addition to the police murders of Tony McDade, Yassin Mohamed, Sean Reed, Breonna Taylor, Steven Taylor, the vigilante murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and the hate crime murder of Nina Pop, and countless others, has re-sparked collective outrage that is being met with the brute force of state repression — all during a pandemic that is disproportionately claiming Black and Indigenous lives in this country.

We, as Asians4BlackLives (A4BL), join our comrades in denouncing these gross displays of state-sanctioned police violence, and renew our call to all non-Black people of Asian descent to move in solidarity with Black communities for Black liberation and resistance.

We cannot look past the fact that at least one of the MPD police officers involved in the murder of George Floyd, Tou Thao, is Asian American. While we acknowledge the complex and contradictory histories of who make up “Asian Americans,” another instance of the direct involvement of officers of Asian descent in the death of a Black man is not just a damning symbol for Asian American complicity in the death of Black people, but also a direct manifestation of anti-Blackness in our communities.

This history of anti-Blackness runs deep, from the murder of Latasha Harlins by Soon Ja Du to daily practices of racial profiling and cultural appropriation. Non-Black Asians must act swiftly to end all forms of violence against Black people. We call on Asian Americans to reject the model minority myth, which was historically created to delegitimize Black resistance while absolving non-Black Americans from addressing systemic racism. It is our duty to continue the legacy of past and present Black and Asian solidarity — from activists like Yuri Kochiyama, Grace Lee Boggs, and Kartar Dhillon to the Black Buffalo soldiers who defected from the U.S. army in support of Philippine independence. This means organizing our communities in solidarity and protesting using a diversity of tactics, including shutting down business as usual to ensure that each life wrongfully taken by the police does not go in vain.

Abolish the Police

We echo what Black activists have said countless times: the institution of modern-day policing — with its origins in slave-catching — has always served to protect private property and the ruling elite at the expense of Black, Indigenous, and poor and working class communities. Police violence against Black people is not the result of some officers being “a few bad apples.” The trees producing these apples are rotten to the roots. The problem cannot be fixed with simple reform measures — abolition of the police as an institution is necessary to prevent further Black lives from being lost.

Uplift Black Resistance, Help Build Black Power

We uplift the demands from the Movement for Black Lives and amplify the call to divest from police and invest in community. We also join Reclaim the Block, Black Visions Collective, and others who have called on the Minneapolis City Council to defund the Minneapolis Police Department (and all police departments) and invest in resources that actually keep Black communities (and thereby also all communities) safe and healthy by sharing and signing this petition.

We urge our communities to continue to join spaces and groups of people that are on the frontlines of building a society rooted in Black Power and Black Liberation, a world where Black Lives truly matter:

Build strong communities and community safety plans; #DontCalltheCops.

Fight to abolish the prison industrial complex that continuously profits from locking up Black people and perpetuates a never-ending cycle of criminalization and violence. #AbolishPrisons.

Fight to #CancelRent and raise the minimum wage so that Black communities can afford to live in the neighborhoods they are often displaced from.

Fight for a just transition, a #BlackNewDeal, #RedNewDeal and a #GreenNewDeal to counter the greed of corporations that for too long have profited off of the destruction of our Mother Earth and the environmental racism that disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous people.

Fight for #MedicareForAll, so that Black people can have access to quality healthcare that does not lead to catastrophic spending and bankruptcy.

Fight for a society in which wealth is not concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires who utilize the police to violently protect their interests.

Fight against imperialism, which threatens Black communities globally, and support people-led movements worldwide.

Build life together that promotes not just surviving, but thriving: SOLUTIONS not PUNISHMENT.

Research the Black-led groups in your area. Talk to your non-Black friends and family about anti-Blackness. Listen, plug in to action, and donate to Black individuals and organizations.

Donate to vetted, Black-led organizations, bail funds, and allied groups in your area. In Minnesota, we recommend the following, which are currently accepting donations as of June 1, 2020: George Floyd’s family GoFundMe, CTUL, a low-income worker of color-led organization (mostly Latinx) down the block from where George Floyd was killed, who have been offering mutual aid to protesters, and Northstar Health Collective, street medics treating people and training folks how to take care of each other in protests.

In all these struggles, follow the leadership and center the perspectives of those most affected.

All lives do not matter until Black Lives Matter. Asian Americans need to strengthen our solidarity with our Black siblings. We must struggle and fight together for an end to the unjust siege against Black communities everywhere, and put an end to the police state and all forms of state-sanctioned violence.

Together, with our comrades, we demand:

Justice for George Floyd Justice for Tony McDade Justice for Yassin Mohamed Justice for Sean Reed Justice for Breonna Taylor Justice for Steven Taylor Justice for Ahmaud Arbery Justice for Nina Pop Justice for all Black Lives

Black Lives Matter

In Love, Power, and Solidarity, Asians4BlackLives

[decolonizationxabolition]

Leftist politics, prison abolitionist politics, and some distinctions we really need to talk about

Hey folks, and thanks for coming back to my blog if you’re reading this! So the topic for this blog post is basically going to be pointing out some important contrasts between leftist politics and prison abolitionist politics. I am especially going to be roasting the radical left so just be ready for that. 

Anyways, the way I am going to unpack this is through criticizing the way that “revolutionary” leftists criticize the actions of one of my favorite politicians Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom is a young Latina representing the Bronx in the House of Representatives. I will be referring to this article first specifically and point out some things, and then we will get right to it. I would also like to note, that I am going to be keeping my commentary specific to the context of the United States, so please keep that in mind. 

So, in regards to criticizing the actions of politicians through the lens of prison abolitionist politics, it is important to point out that the people/communities within the United States that support prison abolition do not support any type of politician that embraces the prison industrial complex for any reason at all. In the article that I linked above, it talks about how AOC and Bernie Sanders “supported” a coup in Venezuela. Well, I’ll have you know that the incumbent president at the time (Maduro) essentially embraced the prison industrial complex and arrested people that were criticizing him. Which is a big no no for prison abolitionist politics/principles. Maduro is essentially being a neofascist in doing that, so is it really a coup if Maduro is behaving that way? To prison abolitionists, it really doesn’t matter if he is left or not, the fact that he did that is enough for us to remain neutral on what was happening in Venezuela in that moment in time. The prison system is still capitalistic, and on top of that dehumanizing as fuck. So no, we don’t care about him, literally at all. His actions are not revolutionary. 

The thing that radical leftists need to realize (for folks that identify as radical left and are serious about police/prison abolition) is that prison abolitionist politics are not exactly the same as leftist politics, they do in fact intersect frequently within the spectrum of leftist politics (socialism, communism, anarchism, etc.) but they are not one and the same. The reason for this is because of the fact that prison abolitionists are mainly concerned with dismantling the prison system itself, that is the MAIN focus. And in order to do that, we must be open minded and not take hard stances on our political views, especially because prison abolition is a long term goal. This instagram post on @blackabolitionist’s profile explains how prison abolitionists are looking for “abolishing reforms” and views criminal justice reforms (ex. restoring the right to vote) as ways to move towards the abolition of prisons, which contradicts the stances that “change won’t come from the system” and that “all reforms are racist”. 

I would also like to point out that taking hard stances on leftist views is not helpful because this white colonizer government studies your political ideologies and “went to the books to read about how policies would affect black and brown folks” with reforms that appear to benefit low-income black and brown folks in an immediate sense, but ultimately strengthen the prison industrial complex. So, you’re lack of participation (not voting on reforms because you’re “anti-system” lmao) and educating yourself on the specific policies and reforms (that do not necessarily lean right or left per se and are nuanced in nature) has strengthened the PIC because all the folks that are left to vote are racist white folks that have little to no idea about how these policies are going to actually affect people  in the long run and on top of that the government suppresses the vote. Hence why so many racist reforms have passed and made the PIC powerful as fuck. Fortunately for those that desire to educate themselves, there is a book called The End of Policing by Alex Vitale that is not only a deeply researched book, but also extremely accessible to read if you’re not an avid academic reader (free pdf here), where he fully unpacks the reforms made to the prison system that have made the PIC so powerful, the impacts that they have had on people, and alternative policies that move away from the prison system all together. 

I also would like to point out to people on the radical left that hold the views of restorative justice (which has been criticized and has it’s limits) as a practice of abolition, that their views actually differ from some of the community art spaces within the United States that are active in not only as abolition as a practice, but are also some of the activists on the political front working towards the agenda of prison abolition through community organizing and the use of a transformative justice approach and community accountability rather than a restorative justice approach (these are also some of the folks building formal discourse on what TJ is and how it can aid towards the agenda of abolition, especially for survivors of sexual abuse/assault) [resources on TJ v. RJ: (1/2)]. And as someone that has had the privilege of being apart of an amazing community that uses transformative justice and community accountability as a practice for abolition and has friends that are prison abolitionist activists, it is very apparent to me how TJ and community accountability is playing out in the realm of politics with AOC, what is really shocking to me is that she appears to be running in the same circles/networks (it is surprising but also not surprising since she used to be a bartender in the Bronx hmmm, it appears that she is working with prison abolitionist activists, especially the formerly incarcerated and it appears that our community circles are quite close even though we are West Coast). 

Anyways, an example that is very apparent to me is when both leftists and conservatives questioned why AOC distanced herself from Bernie Sanders after Joe Rogan gave him an endorsement. But honestly, as someone that is relatively up to date with pop culture, lives in the United States, and knows who Joe Rogan is (and if you don’t, he is a comedian) and for those of you who do know who JR is, then you probably know that he runs a podcast where he has openly expressed his cop apologist views . So it appears that she distanced herself from him because of that, which honestly makes a lot of sense when you view it in those terms, it’s very apparent to me that she is likely apart of a prison abolitionist community that is holding her accountable, not the justice democrats. 

Leftists, AOC is not a communist, anarchist, or a socialist. She is a PRISON ABOLITIONIST first and foremost, whose politics intersects with some of yours, but is primarily relying on strategy, community accountability, and direct feedback as a way to move closer towards the objective of prison abolition. And no, she is not going to be perfect, which is why we need shared analysis and realistic expectations. It is actually very encouraging that someone like AOC is in office right now (along with the rest of the squad), and it is extremely obvious to activists on the frontlines that she will not save us. What we need is more people like her to go into office in huge numbers, which requires community organizing. And guess what, the prison industrial complex is powerful as fuck here in the United States (it’s insane, people are genuinely afraid to come against this system and it’s very understandable), and the reason why that is has a lot to do with politics and the complex network between corporate interests and our bureaucracy. Some leftist folks have unrealistic expectations that are actually extremely unhelpful. Especially since some of these folks read at an academic level, have class privilege, and express their views without educating themselves first. And as someone who has been personally affected by the PIC at a very young age (and no I am not going to elaborate on it), it is very frustrating.

Okay, so to end this blogpost I am going to leave you all to ponder the revolutionary act of direct feedback, transformative justice practices, and how necessary it is in community spaces, abolition, and building decolonial futures. 

And if any of you are interested in TJ practices a couple of books are: Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories From the Transformative Justice Movement and Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication. 

[mappingthemoon]

We have to build up the skills of being able to ask questions like: What does it mean to actually center a survivor who is harmed? What does it mean to actually support people who have caused harm? What does it mean to take responsibility for saying, 'We refuse in our community to condone when this happens'? One of the things that is so important is that harm causes wounds that necessitate healing. That is what so many people are looking for—a way to begin to heal. How are we going to create in our communities, spaces that allow people real opportunity to heal? "Again, this will not necessarily be accomplished through compulsory confession in a public way. But, how do we hold that people who have been harmed deserve an opportunity for that harm to be addressed in a real way? Often, that is all people want: a real acknowledgement that, 'I was hurt. Somebody did it. I want them to know that they did it. I want to see that they have some remorse for having done it and I want them to start a process by which they will ensure to themselves, at least, and be accountable to their community for not doing it again. That is what I am trying to get as a survivor.' I think there is hope in that.

Mariame Kaba, “From ‘Me Too’ to ‘All of Us’: Organizing to End Sexual Violence, Without Prisons”

(thx @gowns I’m p sure I got this from one of your recent posts)

Okay, this is the kind of thing I (personally) needed to hear re: abolition. I think I react with cynicism/skepticism towards a lot of the lil IG-ready blurbs I see circulating with these vague admonishments to “rethink justice” and “rethink criminality” because to me (and perhaps my ptsd-addled aggressively-defensive trauma brain comes into play a lot here, I will own that), they come off as putting the onus on survivors to “just get over it.” Oh, you were hurt by someone? Well, consider the pain they must be suffering! They’ve experienced so much trauma and oppression under [the kyriarchy] that it drove them to hurt you. You need to be more compassionate.

A fucked-up thing, at least in my own case, is my obsessive efforts at “being more compassionate” contributed to my inability to escape abusive situations in the past. I excused my abuser’s behavior because I knew that he’d also been a victim. I sympathized with his inability to express himself in nonviolent ways: he doesn’t know any better, no one ever taught him how to do emotions. I tried desperately to empathize with his struggle to quit drinking because lord knows how impossible it is for alcoholics to access affordable, effective recovery programs. The System didn’t help us but I often felt abandoned by the countercultural community, which itself was teeming with toxicity. I felt like I had to be the therapist and the mediator; I was the one reading piles of self-help books and zines, learning nonviolent communication strategies, and trying to singlehandedly ~restorative justice~ my way to a healthy/functional relationship with someone who wasn’t putting in any effort -- and then I’d wonder what I was doing wrong! I was bending over backwards to recognize the humanity inherent in my abuser while he was isolating me from my friends and gaslighting me into madness. It’s hard for me to separate all these threads, and that’s why it���s important for me, as a survivor, to see discussions like this, about centering survivors (and their healing) without (intentionally or unintentionally) pressuring them to lead the whole community into a post-cop world by changing our perspective on “crime.” (To be clear, I am talking specifically about crimes committed against the person, not like damage or theft of property, not like mere “neighborhood interpersonal conflicts.”)

Kaba’s assertion here that often, what survivors want is acknowledgement that they were hurt, and a way to begin to heal, is completely true in my case. I never wanted revenge against my abuser. I never wanted him to be punished – prison doesn’t, uh, typically result in rehabilitation. It seemed hopeless but I just wanted him to get the help he needed to no longer drink himself to death. I wanted people to know what had happened to me, for their own protection as well as my own. And, even more hopeless-seeming, I wanted him to know that he had deeply hurt me. Like, that was one of the most crazymaking aspects of the abuse was I had experienced so much anguish while dude always insisted he’d “done nothing wrong.” For years after my escape I worked on settling into the limbo that this experience might have no resolution, that I might never feel a sense of “justice” or even meaning. I am one of the lucky ones, I think – I did eventually, unexpectedly, receive what I felt was a sincere and heartfelt apology from him. And I mean, since capitalism still exists lol, I won’t deny I’d fn love it if I could somehow be reimbursed for the $10,000+ I spent supporting him over five years (not to mention however many thousands of dollars I’ve also spent on therapy and meds for my own recovery). But reading the words from his own keyboard, receiving that validation that MY PAIN WAS REAL really was an accelerant to my healing. It wasn’t a requirement, but it certainly felt like a huge weight off my shoulders and it helped me to be able to focus on moving forward. I doubt many survivors actually get that kind of validation, though, which is why it’s so important to be not only rethinking how we deal with “criminals” or perpetrators, but also working on creating and strengthening real community support structures for survivors.

I suppose that the basic meme-ready imperative to “rethink justice” can be a good Intro to Abolition 101 for an average karen who has never before even remotely considered a world without cops. But I’ve been anti-cop since I was like 14, and since my personal background has included shitty experiences with cops and shitty experiences with “””community-based”””” “””accountability processes””” – both methods failing to produce any semblance of “justice” or “safety” regarding my interactions with abusers – I just get frustrated with fluffy big-picture-thinking language. I want people to be talking about the messy, complicated details, like in this piece. I don’t have a lot of exp with abolitionist literature so I really appreciate being steered in this direction – thx again @gowns

[totalliberationfront]

Giving and receiving freely is the basis of long term consensual community. Existing state, nonprofit and private entities were crafted to maintain the global capitalist order. These entities occasionally dole out useful material aid to a select few; however it will always be in conjunction with consolidating power for the present order. These forces manifested and maintain the carceral state. They are responsible for the tear gas, the beatings, the police unions and the mandatory minimum sentences. There is no dignity in begging for scraps from the masters table. We seek to empower not to dictate. We seek to empty every cage and grow gardens in their stead. We demand nothing short of total liberation for humans and our animal kin.

The practice of Mutual Aid is the process by which people come together to directly meet one another's needs without politicians or bosses interceding. Human beings are social animals who evolved surviving in non-hierarchical groups. We have an affinity for self care, community care and individual expression. Through coming together to meet our material, emotional and social needs we present an alternative to the racist hierarchical settler state we find ourselves in. The oppressive saga of empire, capitalism slavery and compulsory heterosexuality is a broken narrative. We seek an end to the occupation and to the exploitation of stolen land.

Mutual Aid posits that the Social Contract as envisioned by Liberals is woefully inadequate and the dictates of authoritarians and fascists are antithetical to life. We need not cede our autonomy nor our labor to exploitative systems. We need not cede our bodies to confinement. We are taught the gospel of work yet many who work go hungry. Many who have skills can't find paid work which implements them. Much of the productive activity humans engage in has devastating ecological consequences, as we do it in the interest of capital. We as communities can do better. We cannot rely on outside entities to help us. Abolishing them is necessary for our survival.

Professions serving existing entities within the present order will inherently be limited in their capacity to produce change. Individuals trained to operate in those professions often acquire skills and education which can be used to empower our communities. Many of those individuals now professionals are incentivized to hoard  their knowledge for material gain. However, material gain matters little in a dying world where one is alienated from other people. Some with privilege see through the notion that cops and politicians are their true allies. Some see the concepts of law and crime for what they are; tools of the oppressor.

In our present era where the material lives of many of these professionals has declined, while the visible accumulation of wealth by the exploiting classes has increased, many professionals are more inclined to share their knowledge. Every year they see the carceral state destroys more lives with solitary confinement, police brutality and the willful infliction of PTSD and they want to strike back. There are an array of people eager to absorb and implement their knowledge, who have not been granted the same educational or career opportunities by the system as the professional class. These folx have an equally relevant set of skills to share with professionals.

When we make an Anarchist space, dedicated to gender freedom, decolonization, prison abolition and black liberation folx inclined to share and support will find us. We keep showing up and we keep doing the real work. Direct Action and a co-occurring support network will inspire and educate. When we make time to help each other process the overlapping layers of oppression strangling us all and poisoning the earth we begin to grow. The powers that be understand how to lop the head off of vertical structures. They lie in wait for the vanguard party and the terrorist cell. Egoists and those dedicated to hierarchy recognize parallel frameworks.

Rather than work within the system or construct a parallel institution we can build dual power via Mycelic Growth. We recognize that orgs, affinity groups, networks etc.. are all necessary structures; however they are tools of liberation for the larger community and friend circles which populate them. Our relationships are the core of the revolutionary project. Maintaining those relationships as systems of support, empowerment and education is our primary task. As the powers of reaction seek to define and contain us we must be like water. We must be able to take a new form without waiting for permission from a governing assembly or leader. We will meet the needs of our neighbors and ourselves the best we can, starting today.

We share skills and knowledge at the speed of trust, seeking to undercut our own possible hierarchical gain. We encourage the flourishing of interlocking groups with interlocking values blooming independently then laying down root systems; intertwining with others. If an org becomes legitimized as a charity or nonprofit by the powers that be, that org should be an entry point to other projects. The material services that org provides needs to be grounded in an actual need while also serving as an entry point for other forms of Direct Action. We disperse zines, PDFs articles and albums hoping you will lay down new roots searching for our own.

We start with food and other basic goods. We get as many people giving those out for free as possible. We ask people what they need and give it to them. We step up the level and quality of goods. We point to our successes and the failures of the state. We occupy until extracted by colonial agents. We are there for each other when the pigs shut us down, and when we are there when its time to reorganize and reopen. Seeing that we can do these things for a few people breaks the spell. Why do we have to wait on medical care? Why can't we remodel and build until everyone is housed? Why isn't their food growing on every available patch of land? Why aren't we getting together with out neighbors and making these decisions through building consensus and direct democracy?  

It starts by handing things out and grows to producing the things we need together. It continues when we take action in the streets. Our banners hang outside of jails and prisons. Our friends stand with us in a total expression of their being. It flourishes when the community seizes a factory or stops an eviction. It won't end until whiteness is abolished.  

As we grow our thoughts deepen. Why is that we need police and prisons, when me and my friends can solve so many issues by building rapport with folx and offering mediation? Why do we allow others to hold exclusive legal rights to the application of violence and the dividing up of material goods? Our questions become statements. We will learn to heal trauma and provide community. We will learn that communities can defend themselves. We demand total abolition and we demand a new society. We won't settle for less. We want everything.

In our own time and in our own space with our own words. Grow and share. Nurture and protect.

[blackfreethinkers]

Ten years have passed since my book, “The New Jim Crow,” was published. I wrote it to challenge our nation to reckon with the recurring cycles of racial reform, retrenchment and rebirth of caste-like systems that have defined our racial history since slavery. It has been an astonishing decade. Everything and nothing has changed.

When I was researching and writing the book, Barack Obama had not yet been elected president of the United States. I was in disbelief that our country would actually elect a black man to be the leader of the so-called free world. As the election approached, I felt an odd sense of hope and dread. I hoped against all reason that we would actually do it. But I also knew that, if we did, there would be a price to pay.

Everything I knew through experience and study told me that we as a nation did not fully understand the nature of the moment we were in. We had recently birthed another caste system — a system of mass incarceration — that locked millions of poor people and people of color in literal and virtual cages.

Our nation’s prison and jail population had quintupled in 30 years, leaving us with the highest incarceration rate in the world. A third of black men had felony records — due in large part to a racially biased, brutal drug war — and were relegated to a permanent second-class status. Tens of millions of people in the United States had been stripped of basic civil and human rights, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, education and basic public benefits.

Nevertheless, our nation remained in deep denial that a new caste system even existed, and most of us — even those who cared deeply about racial justice — did not seem to understand that powerful racial dynamics and political forces were at play that made much of our racial progress illusory. We had not faced our racial history and could not tell the truth about our racial present, yet growing numbers of Americans wanted to elect a black president and leap into a “colorblind” future.

I was right to worry about the aftermath of Obama’s election. After he was inaugurated, our nation was awash in “post-racialism.” Black History Month events revolved around “how far we’ve come.” Many in the black community and beyond felt that, if Obama could win the presidency, anything was possible. Few people wanted to hear the message I felt desperate to convey: Despite appearances, our nation remains trapped in a cycle of racial reform, backlash and re-formation of systems of racial and social control.

Things have changed since then. Donald Trump is president of the United States. For many, this feels like whiplash. After eight years of Barack Obama — a man who embraced the rhetoric (though not the politics) of the civil rights movement — we now have a president who embraces the rhetoric and the politics of white nationalism. This is a president who openly stokes racial animosity and even racial violence, who praises dictators (and likely aspires to be one), who behaves like a petulant toddler on Twitter, and who has a passionate, devoted following of millions of people who proudly say they want to “make America great again” by taking us back to a time that we’ve left behind.

We are now living in an era not of post-racialism but of unabashed racialism, a time when many white Americans feel free to speak openly of their nostalgia for an age when their cultural, political and economic dominance could be taken for granted — no apologies required. Racial bigotry, fearmongering and scapegoating are no longer subterranean in our political discourse; the dog whistles have been replaced by bullhorns. White nationalist movements are operating openly online and in many of our communities; they’re celebrating mass killings and recruiting thousands into their ranks.

White nationalism has been emboldened by our president, who routinely unleashes hostile tirades against black and brown people — calling Mexican migrants criminals, “rapists” and “bad people,” referring to developing African nations as “shithole countries” and smearing a district of the majority-black city of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Millions of Americans are cheering, or at least tolerating, these racial hostilities.

Contrary to what many people would have us believe, what our nation is experiencing is not an “aberration.” The politics of “Trumpism” and “fake news” are not new; they are as old as the nation itself. The very same playbook has been used over and over in this country by those who seek to preserve racial hierarchy, or to exploit racial resentments and anxieties for political gain, each time with similar results.

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, Democratic and Republican politicians leaned heavily on the racial stereotypes of “crack heads,” “crack babies,” “superpredators” and “welfare queens” to mobilize public support for the War on Drugs, a get-tough movement and a prison-building boom — a political strategy that was traceable in large part to the desire to appeal to poor and working-class white voters who had defected from the Democratic Party in the wake of the civil rights movement.

Today, the rhetoric has changed, but the game remains the same. Public enemy No. 1 in the 2016 election was a brown-skinned immigrant, an “illegal,” a “terrorist” or an influx of people who want to take your job or rape your daughter. As Trump put it: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems. … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

He promised to solve this imaginary crisis through mass deportation and building a wall between the United States and Mexico. He also insisted that his political opponent, Hillary Clinton, wanted “millions of illegal immigrants to come in and take everybody’s jobs.” And he blamed domestic terroristic attacks in New Jersey and New York on “our extremely open immigration system,” which, he argued, allows Muslim terrorists into our country.

The fact that Trump’s claims were demonstrably false did not impede his rise, just as facts were largely irrelevant at the outset of the War on Drugs. It didn’t matter back then that studies consistently found that whites were equally likely, if not more likely, than people of color to use and sell illegal drugs. Black people were still labeled the enemy. Nor did it matter, when the drug war was taking off, that nearly all of the sensationalized claims that crack cocaine was some kind of “demon drug,” drastically more harmful than powder cocaine, were false or misleading. Black people charged with possession of crack in inner cities were still punished far more harshly than white people in possession of powder cocaine in the suburbs. And it didn’t matter that African-Americans weren’t actually taking white people’s jobs or college educations in significant numbers through affirmative action programs.

Getting tough on “them” — the racially defined “others” who could easily be used as scapegoats and cast as the enemy — was all that mattered. Facts were treated as largely irrelevant then. As they are now.

Fortunately, a growing number of scholars and activists have begun to connect the dots between mass incarceration and mass deportation in our nation’s history and current politics. The historian Kelly Lytle Hernández, in her essay “Amnesty or Abolition: Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” chronicles how these systems have emerged as interlocking forms of social control that relegate “aliens” and “felons” to a racialized caste of outsiders. In recent decades, the system of mass incarceration has stripped away from millions of U.S. citizens basic civil and human rights until their status mirrors (or dips below) that of noncitizen immigrants within the United States. This development has coincided with the criminalization of immigration in the United States, resulting in a new class of “illegal immigrants” and “aliens” who are viewed and treated like “felons” or “criminals.” Immigration violations that were once treated as minor civil infractions are now crimes. And minor legal infractions, ranging from shoplifting to marijuana possession to traffic violations, now routinely prompt one of the nation’s most devastating sanctions — deportation.

The story of how our “nation of immigrants” came to deport and incarcerate so many for so little, Hernández explains, is a story of race and unfreedom reaching back to the era of emancipation. If we fail to understand the historical relationship between these systems, especially the racial politics that enabled them, we will be unable to build a truly united front that will prevent the continual re-formation of systems of racial and social control.

In my experience, those who argue that the systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation simply reflect sincere (but misguided) efforts to address the real harms caused by crime, or the real challenges created by surges in immigration, tend to underestimate the corrupting influence of white supremacy whenever black and brown people are perceived to be the problem. “Between me and the other world, there is ever an unasked question,” W.E.B. Du Bois famously said back in 1897: “How does it feel to be a problem?” White people are generally allowed to have problems, and they’ve historically been granted the power to define and respond to them. But people of color — in this “land of the free” forged through slavery and genocide — are regularly viewed and treated as the problem.

White nationalism, at its core, reflects a belief that our nation’s problems would be solved if only people of color could somehow be gotten rid of, or at least better controlled. In short, mass incarceration and mass deportation have less to do with crime and immigration than the ways we’ve chosen to respond to those issues when black and brown people are framed as the problem.

As Khalil Gibran Muhammad points out in “The Condemnation of Blackness,” throughout our nation’s history, when crime and immigration have been perceived as white, our nation’s response has been radically different from when those phenomena have been defined as black or brown. The systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation may seem entirely unrelated at first glance, but they are both deeply rooted in our racial history, and they both have expanded in part because of the enormous profits to be made in controlling, exploiting and eliminating vulnerable human beings.

It is tempting to imagine that electing a Democratic president or more Democratic politicians will fix the crises in our justice systems and our democracy. To be clear, removing Trump from office is necessary and urgent; but simply electing more Democrats to office is no guarantee that our nation will break its habit of birthing enormous systems of racial and social control. Indeed, one of the lessons of recent decades is these systems can grow and thrive even when our elected leaders claim to be progressive and espouse the rhetoric of equality, inclusion and civil rights.

President Bill Clinton, who publicly aligned himself with the black community and black leaders, escalated a racially discriminatory drug war in part to avoid being cast by conservatives as “soft on crime.” Similarly, President Obama publicly preached values of inclusion and compassion toward immigrants, yet he escalated the mass detention and deportation of noncitizens.

Obama claimed that his administration was focused on deporting: “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” However, reports by The New York Times and the Marshall Project revealed that, despite Obama’s rhetoric, a clear majority of immigrants detained and deported during his administration had no criminal records, except minor infractions, including traffic violations, and posed no threat.

Equally important is the reality that “felons” have families. And “criminals” are often children or teenagers. The notion that, if you’ve ever committed a crime, you’re permanently disposable is the very idea that has rationalized mass incarceration in the United States.

None of this is to minimize the real progress that has occurred on many issues of race and criminal justice during the past decade. Today, there is bipartisan support for some prison downsizing, and hundreds of millions of philanthropic dollars have begun to flow toward criminal justice reform. A vibrant movement led by formerly incarcerated and convicted people is on the rise — a movement that has challenged or repealed disenfranchisement laws in several states, mobilized support of sentencing reform and successfully organized to “ban the box” on employment applications that discriminate against those with criminal records by asking the dreaded question: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

Activism challenging police violence has swept the nation — inspired by the courageous uprisings in Ferguson, Mo., the viral videos of police killings of unarmed black people, and #BlackLivesMatter. Promising movements for restorative and transformative justice have taken hold in numerous cities. Campaigns against cash bail have gained steam. Marijuana legalization has sped across the nation, with more than 25 states having partly or fully decriminalized cannabis since 2012.

And “The New Jim Crow,” which some predicted would never get an audience, wound up spending nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and has been used widely by faith groups, activists, educators and people directly affected by mass incarceration inside and outside prisons. Over the past 10 years, I’ve received thousands of letters — and tens of thousands of emails — from people in all walks of life who have written to share how the book changed their lives or how they have used it to support consciousness-raising or activism in countless ways.

Everything has changed. And yet nothing has.

The politics of white supremacy, which defined our original constitution, have continued unabated — repeatedly and predictably engendering new systems of racial and social control. Just a few decades ago, politicians vowed to build more prison walls. Today, they promise border walls.

The political strategy of divide, demonize and conquer has worked for centuries in the United States — since the days of slavery — to keep poor and working people angry at (and fearful of) one another rather than uniting to challenge unjust political and economic systems. At times, the tactics of white supremacy have led to open warfare. Other times, the divisions and conflicts are less visible, lurking beneath the surface.

The stakes now are as high as they’ve ever been. Nearly everyone seems aware that our democracy is in crisis, yet few seem prepared to reckon with the reality that removing Trump from office will not rid our nation of the social and political dynamics that made his election possible. No issue has proved more vexing to this nation than the issue of race, and yet no question is more pressing than how to overcome the politics of white supremacy — a form of politics that not only led to an actual civil war but that threatens our ability ever to create a truly fair, just and inclusive democracy.

We find ourselves in this dangerous place not because something radically different has occurred in our nation’s politics, but because so much has remained the same.

The inconvenient truth is that racial progress in this country is always more complex and frequently more illusory than it appears at first glance. The past 10 years has been a case in point. Our nation has swung sharply from what Marc Mauer memorably termed “a race to incarcerate” — propelled by bipartisan wars on “drugs” and “crime” — to a bipartisan commitment to criminal justice reform, particularly in the area of drug policy. And yet, it must be acknowledged that much of the progress occurred not because of newfound concern for people of color who have been the primary targets of the drug war, but because drug addiction, due to the opioid crisis, became perceived as a white problem, and wealthy white investors became interested in profiting from the emerging legal cannabis industry.

Some of the reversals in political opinion have been striking. For example, John Boehner, a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, stated in 2011 that he was “unalterably opposed to decriminalizing marijuana,” but by the spring of 2018 he had joined the board of a cannabis company.

Growing sympathy for illegal drug users among whites and conservatives, and concern regarding the expense of mass imprisonment, helped to make possible a bipartisan consensus in support of the Trump administration’s First Step Act — leading to the early release of more than 3,000 people from federal prisons for drug offenses. This development, which benefits people of color subject to harsh and biased drug sentencing laws, is difficult to characterize as major progress toward ending mass incarceration, given that Trump continued to unleash racially hostile tirades against communities of color and his administration vowed to reinstate the federal death penalty. He also rescinded a number of significant reforms adopted by Obama and expanded the use of private prisons.

Obama also has a complicated legacy with respect to criminal justice reform. Obama was the first sitting president to visit a federal correctional facility, the first to oversee a drop in the federal prison population in more than 30 years, and he granted clemency to nearly 2,000 people behind bars — the highest total for any president since Harry Truman. His administration enacted significant policy changes, including legislation reducing sentencing disparities involving crack and powder cocaine, a phasing out of federal contracts with private prisons, and limitations on the transfer of military equipment to local police departments.

And yet it sometimes appeared that Obama was reluctant to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the structural changes required to address police violence and the prevailing systems of racial and social control.

For example, when black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested in his own home for no reason, Obama responded to the national furor and media frenzy by inviting Gates and the arresting officer to a “beer summit” at the White House to work things out over drinks and peanuts, as though racial profiling is little more than an interpersonal dispute that can be resolved through friendly dialogue.

Most troubling, the modest criminal justice reforms that were achieved during the Obama administration coincided with the expansion of the system of mass deportation. Although the administration agreed to phase out federal contracts for private prisons, it made enormous investments in private detention centers for immigrants, including the granting of a $1 billion contract to Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest prison company, to build a detention facility for women and children asylum seekers from Central America.

Immigrant detention centers were exempted from the phaseout plan for private prisons, which meant that only about a quarter of the population held in private facilities in the United States was affected by the plan. The caging of immigrants for profit was allowed to continue without restraint.

The reality is that, during both the Obama and Clinton years, highly racialized and punitive systems thrived under liberal presidents who were given the benefit of the doubt by those who might otherwise have been critics. Obama and Clinton’s public displays of affection for communities of color, the egalitarian values they preached and their liberal or progressive stances on other issues helped to shield these vast systems of control from close scrutiny.

Many of us saw these presidents as “good people” with our best interests at heart, doing what they could to navigate a political environment in which only limited justice is possible. All of these factors played a role, but one was key: These systems grew with relatively little political resistance because people of all colors were willing to tolerate the disposal of millions of individuals once they had been labeled criminals in the media and political discourse. This painful reality suggests that ending our nation’s habit of creating enormous systems of racial and social control requires us to expand our sphere of moral concern so widely that none of us, not even those branded criminals, can be viewed or treated as disposable.

If there is any silver lining to be found in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, it is that millions of people have been inspired to demonstrate solidarity on a large scale across the lines of gender, race, religion and class in defense of those who have been demonized and targeted for elimination. Trump’s blatant racial demagogy has awakened many from their “colorblind” slumber and spurred collective action to oppose the Muslim ban and the border wall, and to create sanctuaries for immigrants in their places of worship and local communities.

Many who are engaged in this work are also deeply involved in, or supportive of, movements to end police violence and mass incarceration. Growing numbers of people are beginning to see how the politics of white supremacy have resurfaced again and again, leading to the creation and maintenance of new systems of racial and social control. A politics of deep solidarity is beginning to emerge — the only form of politics that holds any hope for our collective liberation.

The centuries-long struggle to birth a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy — a nation in which every voice and every life truly matters — did not begin with us, and it will not end with us. The struggle is as old as the nation itself and the birth process has been painful, to say the least. My greatest hope and prayer is that we will serve as faithful midwives in our lifetimes and do what we can to make America, finally, what it must become.