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Isaac Ontiveros: What we mean is that we want to end the whole system of mutually reinforcing relationships between surveillance, policing, the courts, and imprisonment that fuel, maintain, and expand social and economic inequity and institutional racism. So, not just prisons.By “abolition,” we mean that we are interested in doing away with the system rather than finding ways to make it work better or for it to be kinder and gentler. We don’t see the prison-industrial complex as broken; we see it working very, very well at surveilling, policing, imprisoning, and killing exactly who it targets. As abolitionists, we work to diminish the scope and power of the prison-industrial complex while simultaneously increasing the ability of those communities targeted by it to be stronger, healthier, and more self-determined.
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The US government, along with state and local governments, has always been involved one way or another in enforcing racial inequities—whether through social codes, laws and statutes, policing policies and practices, encouragement of vigilante violence, or outright domestic warfare against certain segments of the population. And poor people of color have borne the brunt of this violence—and, importantly, they’ve also been at the forefront in fighting back.
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Well, I think an interesting part of that question is that even as the US has managed to lock up more people than any other country in the world, and has built probably the most massive and repressive policing, legal, and imprisonment system in history, we still tend to be pretty terrified in this country. This is not to say that violence—including sexual violence and murder—isn’t a real thing or a real fear. But I think in order to build up any hope of moving beyond the bleak situation we are in… we have to ask a few tough questions, and we have to change quite a few things. How do we relate to violence in our communities vis-à-vis the terrible violence that is wrought by the US government on a global scale, or by the prison-industrial complex domestically on a daily basis? How do we understand violence in relationship to the devastation caused by racism and economic inequity? How do we relate to sexual violence when we are inundated with horrendously misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic images? Our fears might be real, but our fears are also being produced and exploited. And then, of course, how do we think of anything else but prisons and police when we’ve be indoctrinated with this idea that all problems are solved by locking people up?
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Rather than saying, “Is it wrong to call the cops?” I want us to ask, “Is there anything we can do besides call the cops?” I think the more we can ask ourselves that question, and ask it among our friends, families, coworkers, neighbors, organizations, etc., and try to ask it and answer it as imaginatively as possible before things escalate, the more we will be able to respond swiftly and thoughtfully during crises.
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Like any social change, it will take time and is something that requires taking decisive and strategic steps toward the world we want to see. We have a broad vision of a world without prisons, police, surveillance, and the inequities they defend, and as we takes steps toward that world, we understand better what the path forward is going to look like.In Los Angeles, we work with other organizations and community members to fight back the expansion of the LA County Jail, which is the largest jail system in the world. We are working to do the same in San Francisco County. In New Orleans, we were able to win a cap on the number of people that can be locked up in the notorious Orleans Parish Prison—no small feat, given that Louisiana has the highest imprisonment rate in the US—so now the challenge is to get people out.In Oakland, we won a fight against the racist policing policy known as a civil gang injunction, which under threat of arrest and imprisonment restricts the freedom of movement and association of individuals profiled as gang members—in the US, this has never been used against a white person—and now we are working in neighborhoods to develop ways people can take care of one another without using the police. In California as a whole we’ve been successful in winning massive cuts to the prison budget. We’ve also worked with prisoners and their loved ones and advocates to support three massive prison hunger strikes in protest of the state’s use of solitary confinement. We run a mail program and publish a newspaper that goes to thousands of prisoners throughout the US, aimed at working to develop our capacity as activists inside and outside prisons. All of our members are volunteers, and we do most of our work in coalition with the idea that we are think it is necessary to build a movement to both dismantle what keeps us down and to build up the world we believe is possible. At every turn, we try to put forward a vision of what we are for as strongly as we fight what we are against.Working to improve the conditions faced by those behind bars seems like a good thing, but is there a fear it could make the current system more sustainable, injecting life into an unjust system?
This is a crucial challenge that doesn’t have an easy answer. The system we are up against is not fixed, and those who work as its strategists and technicians aren’t stupid—so it grows, changes, and adapts, and that includes accommodating and adjusting to reforms. Our organizing philosophy cautions us to try to not build up something that we have to knock down later. This is not easy, but is also part of any sustainable process of change. For example, ending solitary confinement doesn’t necessarily mean anyone gets to come home, but it does neutralize one of the main tools prison systems use to inhibit prisoner social and political organization. So organizing against that hopefully increases the capacity of imprisoned people (and those in the communities from which they come) to fight for further gains that might lead to more freedom.Charles Davis is a writer and producer in Los Angeles. His work has been published by outlets including Al Jazeera, the New Inquiry, and Salon.