Introduction
PRENTIS HEMPHILL
I met Patrisse many years ago around the same time I was introduced to abolition. I met her (her father, too) at a fundraiser for a mutual friend’s brother who had just recently been incarcerated. I have several family members who have been incarcerated. One, a cousin, was inside at the time, and I was beginning to politically engage in organizing efforts around opposing jail expansion. I was on the cusp of bringing the important, necessary worlds together inside of me: my personal life and story and my organizing visions. That night, with the openness and clarity with which everyone spoke about the interconnection between the two and the out loud dreaming of another way for our relations, was a revelation to me. Abolition was no longer something that happened outside of me or far away from me. I could also now see how abolition meant new futures for my family and for all of our families.
That abolition has come to be a more mainstream debate and conversation, and that it has finally moved beyond the margins of the impossible, is a testament mostly to the work of organizers and scholars who have been telling the truth about our systems for decades. Change can start to happen when we stop taking for granted the confines of our reality and start to become responsive to the lessons we are learning. Abolition is that call, that catalyst. For many this may be a new awakening, a realization that through all the concepts of punishment, and all the stated logic of incarceration, we have been unable to address what seems fundamentally most important when something goes wrong: healing, repair and transformation. In fact, we are realizing that our current systems leave breaches and pain greater than what existed before and equally as tragic. Our current systems of punishment accelerate the ills of history, capturing the poor, the Black, the Brown, the disabled. We can and we have to do better.
This offering from Patrisse Cullors is a gift to those ready to practice abolition. It is a guidebook, a back-pocket reference when you need it. It is also a reminder that the transformation of systems happens in our most intimate places as much as anywhere else. How we deal with the breakdowns with our own people is a demonstration of what we have embodied up to this point. In this book, we are given permission to be in development, to be in learning and practice. We have a long way to go and this is a meaningful move forward for all of us wanting to make the impossible real.
Along the way you will get to hear Patrisse’s reflections, her navigation of complex scenarios, her reflection through story of what this work means and looks like on the ground. She lets us in on where she comes from and who has inspired her along the way. It is so important to name our teachers and co-learners. These are reminders that we are not alone right now or in history. We have and are creating a lineage linked together by a commitment to freedom, but more specifically, we are creating systems that are human centered, repair and healing centered. Systems that believe in the greatest potential of human beings even when we mess up. This book is a companion for all of us in imagining and practicing something more beautiful and more just.
What Is a Handbook?
Handbook (noun):
a. A book capable of being conveniently carried as a ready reference.
b. A concise reference book covering a particular subject.
What you’re holding is not meant to live on a bookshelf. It’s not a textbook, meant for a semester or some singular moment in time. It’s not meant to serve as a backdrop for a conference call. My goal is this: The things I’ve learned about the work I’m in can be valuable. Once you gain a certain sense of self about a particular part of your life, the best thing to do next is to share it.
That’s what this handbook is.
After 20 years of organizing and movement work, I’ve seen and experienced quite a bit: the good, the bad and the ugly, from myself and others. A few years ago, I developed 12 principles or steps that I believe are an essential framework to grow and develop as an abolitionist. I put these ideas into practice, taking great pains to try to maintain my commitment. It’s not easy, but it’s been worth it.
This book is not meant to prove to someone who you are—or who you aren’t. Carrying this book won’t scream, I’m an abolitionist! Not carrying it won’t scream that you’re not one, either.
This book won’t remain spotless. It will have notes scribbled in the margins, questions and reminders for yourself and others. I hope this book makes you think. I don’t need you to always agree with my thoughts here. If I’ve done my job, you won’t agree with every line.
You’ll disagree on some points, sometimes vehemently. Use bookmarks and highlighters. Come back to ideas and reread them if it moves you to do so. Share this book. If there’s an idea or narrative or dynamic that you think applies to someone you think could benefit from it, let them know.
However, there are some things I need you to understand before we begin. First, this is not a memoir. I did that. I’m proud of it. My mission is not to tell my life story—though bits and pieces will help illustrate my points.
Also? I’m human. I’m someone who has fallen and gotten up and fallen again and learned why I was falling—only to find myself falling once more. These 12 principles or steps are about goal setting. They are about understanding who you are and how to bring the idea of abolition to the forefront in your life and in the lives of others. I can’t say I always live up to every principle that we need to dismantle white supremacy, but these are the ingredients. My version of the recipe is not always perfect. I get up and try every day.
Why this work?
First, a fact I’ve come back to, time and again, in my work as an abolitionist: The United States is the world’s largest jailer. We need to take that in and really digest it. This country, third in population (dwarfed by China and India), is the largest jailer of humans on the planet. Most recent numbers show the United States at just over two million prisoners. China has 1.7 million prisoners and India has less than half a million—all according to the World Prison Brief.
We also have the most military bases in the world. The United States has bases in more than 70 countries. Many countries have no military bases on foreign soil!
Here is the quickest of history lessons because it’s important for context. In both 1899 and 1907, world leaders met in The Hague in the Netherlands to negotiate a series of treaties and to decide what actions would be labeled “war crimes.” These meetings became known as the Hague Conventions.
The agreement banned things like:
Planning a war or an atrocity while under a peace treatyMurder or ill-treatment of prisoners of warMurder of hostagesTorture or inhumane treatmentDestruction of cities, towns and villagesDevastation not justifiedAlso, these actions against civilians were banned:
MurderExterminationEnslavementDeportationMass systematic rapeIt was decided that individuals could be held criminally responsible for the actions of a country or its soldiers—although people who win a war are generally not tried for war crimes. (Vietnam is a notable exception, as Americans were tried for war crimes committed there, although the United States is considered the winner of the conflict.)
The list of offenses (it’s just a partial one) seems pretty open and shut. Basically, it boils down to yes, war is hell, but don’t be inhumane.
So, when it comes time to evaluate these war crimes, and many others, which country has committed the most human rights atrocities both during war and peacetime, against others and its own citizens?
The United States of America.
Is it a surprise, with such a militaristic history, that this country has tear-gassed protesters within its own borders? That the United States ships arms and money to territories around the world to support its own need for control? And that those actions have led to harm all over the globe? The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that the United States was the largest exporter of weapons from 2015 to 2019. Russia, at number two, exported 76 percent less than the United States.
Here’s how the United States’ approach breaks down with an individual country. According to the US Department of State, since 1978, Egypt has received over $50 billion in military assistance. Giving this kind of aid to countries like Egypt is supposedly intended to open up an ability for the United States to negotiate with them. But in 2013, when Americans pleaded with Egypt to recognize and protect two camps of nonviolent protesters, there was no response. The urgent request from the United States, a country that sends Egypt billions in the name of diplomacy, was simply denied. Nearly 1,000 Egyptian peaceful protesters were killed by the Egyptian military on a single day in August of 2013.
The United States may talk about peacekeeping, but that’s never truly been the goal. Just because you don’t see the footage of war on social media or the nightly news doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Our country funds war like it’s trying to win a video game. We thrive on conflict, incarceration, crime and punishment, at home and abroad.
All of this is on top of the active genocide of the indigenous people of Turtle Island (their name for North America), a people who lived on this land for thousands of years before it became the United States of America.
There is blood on the hands of this country and the bloody handprints have been left all over the world.
This is where abolition enters.
What Is Abolition?
Abolition: (noun) the action of abolishing a system, practice or institution.
Abolition centers on getting rid of prisons, jails, police, courts and surveillance. Period. How it affects us is so much more than that.
Abolition is a social justice movement. It’s my goal with this handbook to make it clear what abolitionist practice looks like in your day-to-day life. No matter what part of social justice is your personal bellwether, the abolition of prisons, jails, police, courts and surveillance must be part of that struggle.
Are you committed to improving education in your city? Does your city use armed police officers in the schools? Abolitionist practice is part of your fight.
Are you concerned with water pollution in your city? Did you know the Ecologist has ranked the U.S. military as one of the largest polluters in the world? Abolition is part of your fight.
Are you concerned with mental health care in your community? According to the National Association for Mental Illness, every year, two million people who need access to mental health care end up in jails and prisons instead. Abolitionist practice is part of your fight.
Are you concerned with animal rights? The U.S. government subsidizes both meat and dairy, even at a time when both industries have less and less demand. Instead of letting the people make their own decisions through market value, the government intervenes, even when it’s not the healthier alternative. Dairy and beef lobbyists spend billions in our courts and on our politicians to continue their exploitation of animals. Abolitionist practice is part of your fight.
Are you being locked out of the billion-dollar legal marijuana industry? It’s by design. There are people sitting in U.S. jails for selling marijuana while others are on the outside making a legal living doing the exact same thing. Abolitionist practice is part of your fight.
Are you a musician using a streaming service? An in-depth breakdown from the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips law firm explains that you will receive about 12 cents for every dollar of revenue your work earns. Almost 60 cents goes to your record label, and the rest goes to the streaming service. The U.S. government created this system. If you want to fight for better financial terms, you’ll have to go through the court system, and your attorneys will make more than you ever could. If you want to see this changed, abolitionist practice is part of your fight.
If there is any part of your life where you are trying to get free, it connects to abolitionist practice.
Abolitionist practice is also about establishing a system that is rooted in dignity and care for all people. A system that does not rely on punishment as accountability.
What abolitionist practice is not: This is not about fixing a broken system. We are not looking for better food or more access to education in prison. We are looking to abolish the entire system.
When people hear the world abolitionist, they usually think of slavery. Like the mission to abolish slavery, we don’t have a halfway mark. Abolitionists didn’t say, let’s just make slavery better. Let’s get them better shoes and dentures and clothing and fewer beatings and better hours on the plantation and the right to marry and keep their babies.
No, the system had to be abolished. As does the prison system, which shares much in common with the system of slavery.
What Does TRANSFORMATION Look Like?
Here’s an example. In many states in this country, anything dealing with family “issues” is handled in criminal court. It’s unconscionable. If a cis man parent wants to file for visitation with his child, he is automatically listed as the defendant in the case. Even if he filed first. The narrative is that no matter what happens, he will need to defend himself. If the courts decide that the father needs to pay child support, it’s often handled through the same office that processes cash bails, payouts for lawsuits and other criminal matters.
A father who can’t (or won’t) keep up with payments can go to jail, lose his passport and be subject to other punitive measures. This doesn’t help the child, the mother, the father or the larger community. Punishing someone for not making payments by making them unable to make payments doesn’t work and it doesn’t get us closer to transforming ourselves and the world.
We need policies that allow for transformation. We need communities to have the opportunity to support their citizens, to create the family structures that work for their people. Is it a council of elders? Is it self-led sessions to work out conflicts?
We need to think this way in order to get free.
Transformation includes a system for all to have access to free health care. Free means you don’t have to have a certain job—or marry someone who does—in order to get a certain level of health care.
Transforming ourselves and the world means we have access to the seeds, soils and space to grow our own visons of freedom, resilience and possibility for a different world. Our collective joy, creativity and courage will be our new sustenance. This new world we are working to build will let us live purposeful and fulfilling lives in which we will witness the fruits of our labor in our children, siblings and all those who come after us.
ABOLITION IS:
People’s power
Love
Healing justice
Community care
Mutual aid
Transformative justice
Black liberation
Internationalism
Anti-imperialism
The dismantling of structures
Practice, practice, practice
We dare to imagine a world without cages, shackles and chains. As those before us imagined, as well.
Our work, at least for my generation, has a framework that has been laid out for us for years. Professor Angela Y. Davis continues to shape our work and has for decades. Frantz Fanon, Ruth Gilmore and Audre Lorde—these are the people who help us center abolition through many lenses, including a Black, queer and trans feminist lens.
It is often asked if abolition has reparations as part of its goals. Of course it does. Reparations are abolition in action. As noted in my Harvard Law Review article on prison abolition:
Abolition calls on us not only to destabilize, deconstruct, and demolish oppressive systems, institutions, and practices, but also to repair histories of harm across the board. Our task is not only to abolish prisons, policing, and militarization, which are wielded in the name of “public safety” and “national security.” We must also demand reparations and incorporate reparative justice into our vision for society and community building in the twenty-first century. Reparations campaigns encompass a wide array of demands. Most commonly, reparations in our contemporary movements are justified by the historical pains and damage caused by European settler colonialism and are proposed in the form of demands for financial restitution, land redistribution, political self-determination, culturally relevant education programs, language recuperation, and the right to return.
Let’s discuss how we make this happen.
Copyright © 2021 by Patrisse Cullors
