Becoming Abolitionists
by Derecka Purnell
Becoming Abolitionists openly and honestly explores a variety of questions and hesitations about police and prison abolition as Derecka tells the story of her own abolitionist journey and others’. The book details innumerous examples of state-inflicted violence, pulling from personal and shared experience, historical events, and modern research.
“Police and prisons—the default responses today—are woefully insufficient because they don’t solve harm, they simply react to it. We must choose something better.”
MY TAKEAWAYS
When considering harm and violence, the general public tends to focus on the interpersonal realm, failing to acknowledge the systemic and covert forms of state violence that destroy or end lives also.
Police do not prevent harm or remedy the societal issues that lead to violence or harm - they act as social controllers who manage the outcome of the conditions created by an exploitative capitalist society.
“Concentrated wealth is celebrated, concentrated poverty is criminalized. Cities use police, prisons, and prosecutors to manage the space in between the two.”
The vilification of street gangs and gang members contains an ideological fallacy that ignores the reasons behind gang formation and maintenance - most commonly, to provide each member with basic means of survival and protection within a society that otherwise refuses to provide those resources.
Our governments can afford virtually anything we want, but the investments usually fall most heavily in the arena of control and punishment, rather than community-based investments in employment, education, housing, or conflict mediation (all of which would actually help to prevent actions considered crimes).
We often attribute events like mass shootings to “random violence” rather than observing them in a broader context of war and militarism. Many of our country’s mass shooters have connections to or obsessions with war and the military.
“Since 2005, more than five thousand cops have been arrested for sexual violence, misconduct, and child pornography possession, among other offenses; only four hundred lost their badges.”
Disabled and neurodivergent people make up an especially vulnerable community to the carceral state, and account for a large portion of those murdered by police.
Disability (both physical and mental) is also a result of policing, caused by the use of flash bangs, tear gas, rubber bullets, tasers, and other military-grade equipment and violence (not only during protests, but also home raids, searches, and other day-to-day encounters).
Environmental racism, capitalism, and climate changed are all intertwined, and the carceral state is used to manage the devastating impacts of so-called “natural disasters” (events that are commonly the direct result of corporate/human action).
In court cases against cops and in general, many are people are sold on the idea that cops deserve special treatment because they “risk their lives” for our safety every day. In reality, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that “…the jobs with the highest fatal work injuries include fishers and hunters, grounds maintenance workers, construction workers, roofers, and tradespeople…”, not police.
“The greatest threats to our freedom are hopelessness, helplessness, and the criminalization of rebellion.”