Stevie Wilson
sharon-cheryl onga nana
How can we make sure this conference moves beyond words,
beyond academic pageantry
and does not make conditions worse for those inside and their given or chosen families?
Stephen Wilson is a currently incarcerated, Black, queer writer, activist and student. He is a founding member of Dreaming Freedom Practicing Abolition, a network of self-organized prisoner study groups building abolitionist community behind and across prison walls. Follow him on Twitter @agitateorganize. questions and answers by Stevie Wilson
Due to the last minute nature of this session, the recording will have subtitles but ASL interpretation might not be available with regrets from the organizing committee.
sharon-cheryl onga nana will serve as the facilitator of this session.
If arab, indian ocean and transatlantic slave trades qualify as the precursors to the prison industrial complex, remember that many people argued for the incremental abolition of slavery. What then are some arguments against incremental liberation today? The operative word being incremental or incrementalism.
I would like to see if any person who advocates incremental liberation would still hold that position after just one week in prison. I don't think so. The truth is that people who hold the position of incremental liberation fail to acknowledge the humanity of the people we are talking about. This is the only possible reason for someone to believe we should gradually eliminate the torture and death so many millions are enduring today. How can one see others as humans and condone the continued oppression, disappearance and death of those humans? If one truly understood what is happening in our communities and behind these walls, one would feel a marked urgency to dismantle these systems of oppression. Today. I believe the first abolitionist knew the power of witnessing. They understood that visibilizing those who had experienced slavery, bringing them before the public's eye, and allowing them to testify, would rip holes into any argument that suggested a gradual approach.
And just who benefits by gradualism? Surely not those being oppressed.
Always,
Stevie
How do we prevent what you share from being co-opted by systems that want to reframe incarceration and other systems of oppression as positive, beneficial, harmless, warranted, earned, or a necessary evil? How can we make sure efforts to abolish the prison industrial complex do not ameliorate prisons in a way that teaches empires how to be more humane, soft, caring and creative about imprisoning?
One of the ways the PIC is able to pull off the "more responsive, more humane" trick is by latching onto reformist efforts to dichotomize prisoners into deserving/undeserving categories. We need to expose and eliminate these dichotomies. The PIC latches onto these arguments, creates policies that purport to relieve the "undeserving" of whatever torture or harm being debated, and shifts the burden onto the "deserving". Stop the dichotomies!
Stevie
Assuming for fact that all forms of prisons as applied to solely the black african distribute social death in effect and at the existential level. What then does it mean for prisons to be a marker for both old and developing nations to show they are proactive about addressing chaos. Who is seen as the walking implement of chaos. Chaos with respect to what other or whom else. Prison studies, crime and punishment, peace studies like prison towns now represent growing industries where carceral infrastructures become the hottest commodity for import and export all over the world. To address the demand stated is to realize that the who at the core what organized society views as chaos, uncivilizable or ungovernable matters more than the prison industrial complex itself. If the prison is the byproduct, what or who sparks the need to imprison in the first place? For whom are prisons a pathway to redemption. And for whom are prisons a site for the genocidal annihilation of generations.
a 'We' not abolition 2021 or sc, 'rewrote' some questions as to be able to present them to other incarcerated folks. We asked them to think about what prisons do and what are their functions? We asked them who is seen as ungovernable, a problem that must be controlled by society?
Everyone agreed that prisons don't do what they say they do: rehabilitate incarcerated folks. But there were some differences regarding what their function is. Some focused on economics and felt that imprisoned folks are a source of profits for others and this is why the system continues to grow. Some felt race was the factor and view mass incarceration as modern day slavery. Some of us understood the complexity undergirding the PIC, all the ways it props us and is propped up by systems of oppression. What the discussion highlights is the need for more political education behind the walls. There is no way for us to connect the dots between what has and is happening in here to what has and is happening out there, in the U.S. and beyond, without political education.
When asked about prison as a site of redemption, it was clear that race plays a major factor. It seems that white men can commit harm, come to prison, and still be seen as respectable by the public. Black and Brown folks don't get that second chance. We didn't get the first chance! Black and Brown prisoners feel targeted by the PIC. The targeting began in childhood. For many of us, escaping the clutches of the PIC seems impossible.
How do compromises and shortcuts: at the level of naming the carceral world order, at the level of deconstructing the carceral world order, and at the level of actions steps toward mitigating the carceral world order dilute and underdevelop abolitionist momentum?
I am still struggling with the role of compromise in abolitionist work. What is principled compromise?
What can the liberation efforts of black africans shuffled through the transsaharan, indian ocean and the transatlantic slave trade routes out of the african continent, through ships across all seas, and through the carceral world order teach nonviolent abolitionists today?
I have been thinking about why those who see prison as modern slavery don't extend the analogy. Why don't they study and learn resistance and organizing strategies and tactics from the first abolitionists? And we do have much to learn. I believe there is much to learn from them about community and resistance. But I haven't come across much material that makes this argument and connection. I would love to receive this material.