We Do This ‘Til We Free Us
by Mariame Kaba
We Do This ’Til We Free Us is an exciting and thought-provoking collection of essays and interviews that explore transformative justice, the urgency of the abolition movement, and the importance of community and organizing.
“Abolition for me is a long-term project and a practice around creating the conditions that would allow for the dismantling of prisons, policing, and surveillance and the creation of new institutions that actually work to keep us safe and are not fundamentally oppressive.”
MY TAKEAWAYS
As a society, we celebrate criminalization and fail to ask ourselves how and why harm occurs, and what real solutions we could imagine to address those issues outside of the criminal punishment system.
The very systems that claim to “keep us safe” are the same systems that reproduce violence (in many forms, not just limited to physical) in our communities.
In theory, the image of abolition can be found in communities that already have their needs met; often white affluent neighborhoods where the omnipresence of police and surveillance is non-existent and survival needs are met with abundance.
Our often well-intended urgency to obtain justice is misguided by the notion that control and confinement (prisons) serve as the only route to justice. When in fact, punishment is far from justice and our perceptions of justice are shaped by media, high-profile criminal cases, and the system itself which will always be interested in self-preservation.
Abolitionist frameworks do not dismiss harm or violence - they include realistic ways to address harm and violence outside of the criminal punishment system, using methods that do not employ confinement or control as means for obtaining justice.
In building new approaches to address harm and violence, we must ensure that we are not reproducing or mirroring the existing structures of punishment and control.
We must take authority of our own definitions of justice and accountability, and no longer relinquish that power to a system that actively profits from our complacency and indifference.
The avenue to an abolitionist future relies on community and collectivity.
“While some people might think of abolition as primarily a negative project. . . . PIC abolition is a vision of a restructured society in a world where we have everything we need: food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water, and more things that are foundational to our personal and community safety.”