The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition

[DKW 86 7,438]

The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition    MUCH MORE in the Article, Very long.

This had changed by the time Kaba left college and returned to New York City to work with survivors of domestic violence. She was befuddled that many of the women she was working with did not want to call the police on their partners. Kaba said, “Then I started asking people questions like, ‘Why don’t you want to go to the police?’ And people would look at me, like, ‘What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I go to the cops? Do you not see who I am? The cops don’t keep me safe.’ And so I slowly came to consciousness.” In her book, Kaba writes, “What happens when you define policing as actually an entire system of harassment, violence, and surveillance that keeps oppressive gender and racial hierarchies in place? When that’s your definition of policing, then your whole frame shifts. And it also forces you to stop talking about it as though it’s an issue of individuals, forces you to focus on the systemic structural issues to be addressed in order for this to happen.”

There is no definitive beginning point for prison-abolition politics, but it is clearly connected to a turn, beginning in the sixties, in American imprisonment, in which it went from a method, in part, of rehabilitation to one of control or punishment. During the civil-rights movement, police were the shock troops for the massive resistance of the white political establishment in the American South. By the mid-sixties, policing and the criminal-justice system were being retrofitted as a response to a growing insurgency in Black urban communities. By the seventies, they were being used to contain and control both Black radicals and Black prisoners. The scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis may be the best-known prison abolitionist in the United States today. But, in 1972, she was facing charges of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy, after guns registered to her were used by the seventeen-year-old Jonathan Jackson, in a botched attempt to free his brother, the Black radical George Jackson, from Soledad prison.

Davis had become a leader of George Jackson’s defense committee and had developed a close relationship with him. As a result of their collaboration, and of Davis’s experience of spending sixteen months in jail before her acquittal, she devoted her political energies to prisoners’ rights and eventually to prison abolition. In an interview that she gave while awaiting the outcome of her trial, Davis said, “We simply took it upon ourselves at first to defend George Jackson, John Clutchette, and Fleeta Drumgo”—the radicals known as the Soledad Brothers. “But we later realized that the question was much broader than that. It wasn’t simply a matter of three individuals who were being subject to the repressive forces of the penal system. It was the system itself that had to be attacked. It was the system itself that had to be abolished.”

In 1995, the radical theorist Mike Davis wrote a cover story for The Nation describing a new “prison-industrial complex” being established in California, with no pretense that the exponential growth of prisons was tied to the rise and fall of crime. Indeed, according to the scholar and activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore, in her pathbreaking book “Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California,” even though the crime rate peaked in 1980, between 1984 and the early two-thousands, California “completed twenty-three major new prisons,” at a cost of two hundred and eighty to three hundred and fifty million dollars each. By contrast, the state had built only twelve prisons between 1852 and 1964. Bodies were necessary to justify the rapid growth of the prison sector, and the Crime Bill of 1994, along with California’s three-strikes legislation, passed that same year, provided them. Gilmore writes that “the California state prison population grew nearly 500 percent between 1982 and 2000.” The three-strikes law, which mandated twenty-five-years-to-life sentences for a third felony, had an especially severe effect on Black and Latinx communities. Mike Davis reported that, during the first six months of prosecutions under the new law, “African-Americans made up fifty-seven percent of the ‘three strikes’ filings in L.A. County,” even though they made up only ten per cent of the state population. This was seventeen times higher than the rate at which whites were being charged under the new law, even though white men were responsible for “at least sixty percent of all the rape, robberies, and assaults in the state.”

The three-strikes law was an accelerant to what would come to be called “mass incarceration,” but it was also the makings of a new movement against prisons and against the means and methods by which they became populated—namely, policing. In 1997, in Berkeley, Davis, Gilmore, and others formed the organizing group Critical Resistance, which brought together activists, the formerly incarcerated, and academics to “build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people make us safe.” Ten years later, Gilmore published “Golden Gulag,” which she describes as the culmination of research projects undertaken with Black mothers of incarcerated persons in California state prisons. She wrote, “What we learned twice over was this: the laws had written into the penal code breathtakingly cruel twists in the meaning and practice of justice.” This produced new questions, extending far beyond the passage of new laws. The mothers, along with Gilmore, asked, “Why prisons? Why now? Why for so many people—especially people of color? And why were they located so far from prisoner’s homes?” In this sense, although academics have been important to formulating the movement’s arguments, the journey toward abolition is not an academic or intellectual exercise. Instead, it has been gestated within the communities deeply scarred by the disappearing of sons and daughters by the state.

By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the cumulative, devastating effects of twenty years of increasing policing and incarceration—inaugurated by Reagan but abetted by the policies of the Clinton Administration—came into greater focus, as new conversations opened up about structural inequality in the United States. Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow,” published in 2010, offered a breakthrough analysis of continued Black inequality as a product of years of policing and imprisonment in Black communities. Kaba identifies the failure to stop the execution of the Georgia death-row inmate Troy Davis, in 2011, as catalyzing the emergence of an abolitionist consciousness among what Elizabeth Alexander has described as the “Trayvon Generation.” Five months after Davis’s execution, Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman. Kaba noted that “the call, when Trayvon Martin was killed, was to arrest and to prosecute and to convict Zimmerman.” In 2014, after Michael Brown was killed, “the push was to indict Darren Wilson, and for body cameras.” Zimmerman was acquitted, and a grand jury failed to bring charges against Wilson. Kaba said, “And, because so many of these young folks were actually mobilized in the organizing, they could see the futility of the demands that they were making and the limits of those demands, and wanted and were ready to hear something new.”

That generation’s maturation in the world of police reform became apparent last summer, when many young activists and organizers began to embrace a demand that funding for police departments be redistributed to other public agencies and institutions. The demand originated in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, and where the city council briefly committed to defunding the police department. But, Kaba said, it’s important to note that local Black radical organizations—Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, and MPD150—had been campaigning for years to divest from the police department and invest in community groups, battling the police over the city’s budget. She explained, “You’ve already got folks on the ground over there that have had two cycles of budget fights around defunding the police based on divestment. So the part of this people don’t understand is the continuity of these ideas. They don’t just come out of nowhere. People aren’t just yelling stuff randomly. It got picked up nationally because people were, like, ‘This makes sense.’ ”

[BizTiger 242]

Will never happen. Unworkable solutions never get implemented.

[DKW 86 7,438]

18 hours ago, BizTiger said:

Will never happen. Unworkable solutions never get implemented.

Do you live in America? Unworkable is everyday now.

[BizTiger 242]

4 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Do you live in America? Unworkable is everyday now.

Yes. There will be no abolishing police in any city of this country. Go to any inner city with high crime rates and talk to law abiding Black residents about abolish/defund the police. They will laugh in your face. 

People have to STOP giving oxygen to loud, foot stomping, pouty, astroturf-funded, misguided minority. On BOTH SIDES. 

Edited May 10, 2021 by BizTiger

[DKW 86 7,438]

Agreed....I dont think anyone here ever used the term Astroturf but me before now. 

 

[AUDub 11,167]

I spent literally 6 hours on the phone with my BPD buddy yesterday and of course this came up in the discussion. 

Abolishing the police is an extremist and stupid position. There's a good reason Biden refused to even utter "Defund the Police" during the campaign.

14 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Agreed....I dont think anyone here ever used the term Astroturf but me before now. 

Oh, I invite you to search my post history lol. Key on "Astroturf" with me as the author. 

Edited May 10, 2021 by AUDub

[DKW 86 7,438]

Just now, AUDub said:

IOh, I invite you to search my post history lol. Key on "Astroturf" with me as the author. 

Then I humbly stand corrected. Astroturf means that you can see that some of this crap is just ginned up swill at some level. The Red Magas and the Blue Magas fall for it all the time. I just came across the Jordan Peterson interview with the Channel4 Woman. Anyone defending that...they are endorsing Astroturf. She continuously adds words or twists word to say things the man clearly did not say. I was pleased to see he caught and started laughing at her before it was over. She was totally dedicated to putting words in his mouth. Sad.

[AUDub 11,167]

1 hour ago, DKW 86 said:

Then I humbly stand corrected. Astroturf means that you can see that some of this crap is just ginned up swill at some level. The Red Magas and the Blue Magas fall for it all the time. I just came across the Jordan Peterson interview with the Channel4 Woman. Anyone defending that...they are endorsing Astroturf. She continuously adds words or twists word to say things the man clearly did not say. I was pleased to see he caught and started laughing at her before it was over. She was totally dedicated to putting words in his mouth. Sad.

It has a well defined meaning. The term "grassroots" is the key, implying a movement or position springs up organically.

Astroturfing is when someone in a position of power actually creates the movement and tries to pass it off as having sprung up organically among the "regular folks." The TEA party is probably one of the best examples. 

Now regarding Peterson, that man is insane. Peterson's schtick is putting put a lot of incoherent gibberish out there. As a result he can usually handwave challenges on his gibberish as "misrepresentation."

Edited May 10, 2021 by AUDub

[AUDub 11,167]

One of Sharyl Atkisson's favored lines of attack is to blast anyone that disagrees with her as "astroturfing" when challenged on her turn to antivaccine nuttery. She is the "shill gambit" made manifest. 

[DKW 86 7,438]

Oh I like Peterson. Very averse at thinking about the "WHY" of so much banal rhetoric. He has helped so many people over his career and now, with his ever growing following of males has become sort of a savant if nothing else. And, God love him can blow up most narratives in a few seconds. Not signed up for everything, of course, but so far it is nice to know he is at least paying attention. 

He has some very accurate takes on the younger folks. EX: Why are people so absorbed about "Rights?" Its like they are stuck in the third grade. Being obsessed with "Rights' means little if you refuse to take responsibility for yourself. People obsessed with "Rights" must of course get into a battle of "when do your rights end so mine continue to grow exponentially."  

[DKW 86 7,438]

5 hours ago, AUDub said:

It has a well defined meaning. The term "grassroots" is the key, implying a movement or position springs up organically.

Astroturfing is when someone in a position of power actually creates the movement and tries to pass it off as having sprung up organically among the "regular folks." The TEA party is probably one of the best examples. 

Now regarding Peterson, that man is insane. Peterson's schtick is putting put a lot of incoherent gibberish out there. As a result he can usually handwave challenges on his gibberish as "misrepresentation."

Maddow, wore the term Astroturfing out trying to redefine it into essentially "Red Magas doing or claiming anything." She really blew a lot of credibility with the Astroturf charge on EVERYTHING she disagreed with...especially when it ended in the absolutely stunning loss to Trump in 2016. Then she wallpapered the MSNBC Studios with the term. I had so many laughs at her over the years. 

[AU9377 5,019]

One of the most anti-American things that I have ever witnessed is the working of a private prison.

[AuburnNTexas 7,167]

There are two sets of problems here. The radicals as we call them have some valid points. The law has not been enforced in the same manner in poor communities then wealthier communities. I said poor versus Black and Latino  as poor whites have similar incarceration rates as blacks and Latino. We have laws that put people into Prison environments where if not hard core criminals when they went in are when they come out. The second problem is blaming the Police for this issue.  The article is correct that in the South in the 60's that the Police were often used as shock troops. But times have changed most of the major cities have a mixture of Black, White and Latino officers often with Black or Latino leadership.

The real issue is the areas where the Police work. In well to do communities the Police are friendlier and more helpful whereas in poorer communities they tend to be less friendly and tougher.  There is a reason for this. In well to do communities there is a very small amount of violent crime, there is limited to no gang presence. In this environment the Police are not on edge and are not worried about being attacked when making any type of stop or arrest. Sadly in the poorer area there is more violence there is a gang presence. The Police are on High Alert at all times, they worry about being attacked and as such they act differently. The tough streets create a tough and at times adversarial Officer. 

Until the real under lying issues in the poor communities are addressed there will continue to be this adversarial relationship between many people in poor community and the Police. The real issue isn't Policing as much as it is Poverty. Poor schools, lack of good paying jobs, lack of basic needs, higher drug use, kids raised without parental guidance it is a vicious cycle. What is sad is even in the Poor communities the great majority of the people are good law abiding people but because of the conditions are often put in positions where it is easy to make a bad choice and the Police want to help but are aware of how dangerous the streets are and can over-react because of that.

The problem is all the solutions we have tried in Inner cities have failed. Poor schools we often blame this on money and yet many inner schools pay more per student then Private schools in the same area. The issues of the community are seen in the schools independent of how much you par per student. Violence in the schools, gang presence, lack of parental support for education, there are a myriad of reasons. Cost of living in the inner city is often higher then in suburbs Mom and Pop stores versus Grocery chains where you have higher quality food at lower prices then in the Mom and Pop store. 

Schools are the key we need schools to become the center of the community they need to become safe havens. School Uniforms are a must as this removes the gang colors, Truancy officers to be sure kids are going to school, metal detectors to keep out guns and knives, Security guards. Day care at the schools for younger children and after school programs. Longer school day and longer school year. School day care would include early reading programs so kids don't start behind from beginning. Breakfast and lunch at the schools so kids are not hungry.  If kids are in school they are not on the streets, uniforms provided by the schools so all kids are equal, Truancy officers so kids are in school.  Basically school should be open year round either with classes or programs to keep kids off the streets and keep them fed year round. 

The other thing is we need to get the Grocery chains into inner city tax breaks, community based police stations attached to grocery chain. We also need to find a way for Police officers to meet local people on a friendly basis visiting schools, community centers, greeting people at Grocery chains.  We need to help people help themselves. We need to get jobs into inner city. If somebody has a criminal record (Depending on how serious) if they become a part of the community get a job stay out of trouble for something like 5 years we close their criminal file to help them get a better job but if the commit another serious crime the criminal file is opened again.   Lets truly give people a second chance but with safeguards.

Defund the police is not viable with less police you get more violent crime the community is more dangerous not less. There are no easy solutions. The people saying defund the police but put the money into other programs are correct in that they are trying to attack some of the underlying issues but it exacerbates the local crime issue. It is not just a question of money but money spent with well thought out plans and realizing that anything done today could take years to start having a real impact.

The Police are not to blame for the inner city, they are not perfect they make mistakes and at times they protect their own even when a very small number do something that is flat out wrong, but way to much emphasis is put on the bad apples and no place near enough on the good they do in their communities. Sadly in some communities the Police feel like they are going into a combat zone and just like in the Military it leads to stress and breakdowns and at times bad policing.

[AUDub 11,167]

Maybe redlining a bunch of people into the jobless sectors of our cities then having the police enforce a draconian, racist drug policy was a bad idea. 

I dunno, just spitballing. 

[DKW 86 7,438]

26 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Maybe redlining a bunch of people into the jobless sectors of our cities then having the police enforce a draconian, racist drug policy was a bad idea. 

I dunno, just spitballing. 

Now we are talking. We are reaping what we sowed back in 1994...

[AUDub 11,167]

Just now, DKW 86 said:

Now we are talking. We are reaping what we sowed back in 1994...

Predates even that. Redlining has been a thing as long as "undesirables" have. Biggest reason modern day ghettos are what they are today stem from the redlining of the Jim Crow era, and the "War on Drugs" is a policy that kicked off in the 70s. 

[DKW 86 7,438]

I agree, The 1994 Crime Bill just Codified it and Turbocharged it.

[AUDub 11,167]

Just now, DKW 86 said:

I agree, The 1994 Crime Bill just Codified it and Turbocharged it.

In a sense. The problems have always been there. 

This is my biggest issue with mainstream Democrats dating back to Clinton, and this does include Biden. They were in a position to do something and actually exacerbated the issue. The Crime Bill, Welfare "Reform" etc.

These were things that sold well at the time following Reagan but ended up making things worse. 

[AU9377 5,019]

3 hours ago, AuburnNTexas said:

Schools are the key we need schools to become the center of the community they need to become safe havens. School Uniforms are a must as this removes the gang colors, Truancy officers to be sure kids are going to school, metal detectors to keep out guns and knives, Security guards. Day care at the schools for younger children and after school programs. Longer school day and longer school year. School day care would include early reading programs so kids don't start behind from beginning. Breakfast and lunch at the schools so kids are not hungry.  If kids are in school they are not on the streets, uniforms provided by the schools so all kids are equal, Truancy officers so kids are in school.  Basically school should be open year round either with classes or programs to keep kids off the streets and keep them fed year round. 

 

I agree with many things you mentioned.  However, after years of seeing many things thrown at the problem and nothing work, I have come to an unfortunate conclusion.  Until there is a real desire to change in the home, poor performing schools will remain poor performing schools.  That doesn't mean that we give up.  After all, even if only a handful of kids are able to better themselves, it is worthwhile.  You can find poor school districts, usually in rural areas, that consistently outperform similar schools with similar student body demographics.  Pre-K thru 4th is vital to a kid's educational outlook.  A friend of mine compares those early years to a horse race.  The horses that come around the turn with a lead usually finish well.  Getting to the front at that age is something that takes the involvement of a parent, guardian, or someone with the ability to shape a child's brain outside of school hours.

[AU9377 5,019]

2 hours ago, AUDub said:

In a sense. The problems have always been there. 

This is my biggest issue with mainstream Democrats dating back to Clinton, and this does include Biden. They were in a position to do something and actually exacerbated the issue. The Crime Bill, Welfare "Reform" etc.

These were things that sold well at the time following Reagan but ended up making things worse. 

They were really in a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. On its face, the Crime Bill did address what it was intended to address.  It removed judicial discretion and it mandated equal treatment.  Unfortunately, it was doomed from the start because people ignored the fact that every case is different and that no system of justice can work if every circumstance is not considered independently based on the facts of the case.  Using statistical analysis is of little help in determining whether or not the right thing is being done.  There is no easy answer.

[AuburnNTexas 7,167]

1 hour ago, AU9377 said:

I agree with many things you mentioned.  However, after years of seeing many things thrown at the problem and nothing work, I have come to an unfortunate conclusion.  Until there is a real desire to change in the home, poor performing schools will remain poor performing schools.  That doesn't mean that we give up.  After all, even if only a handful of kids are able to better themselves, it is worthwhile.  You can find poor school districts, usually in rural areas, that consistently outperform similar schools with similar student body demographics.  Pre-K thru 4th is vital to a kid's educational outlook.  A friend of mine compares those early years to a horse race.  The horses that come around the turn with a lead usually finish well.  Getting to the front at that age is something that takes the involvement of a parent, guardian, or someone with the ability to shape a child's brain outside of school hours.

I agree but the reality is in a lot of these communities we don't have the needed parental involvement that is why I was insistent on truant officers and forcing kids to go to school and a longer school day. You have to break the cycle and it won't happen overnight. There is no ideal solution but the more kids in school at an early age getting professional guidance there should be an increase in performance. This re-enforces the desire to learn. People tend to do things they are good at. 

Edited May 19, 2021 by AuburnNTexas

[AU9377 5,019]

4 hours ago, AuburnNTexas said:

I agree but the reality is in a lot of these communities we don't have the needed parental involvement that is why I was insistent on truant officers and forcing kids to go to school and a longer school day. You have to break the cycle and it won't happen overnight. There is no ideal solution but the more kids in school at an early age getting professional guidance there should be an increase in performance. This re-enforces the desire to learn. People tend to do things they are good at. 

I agree

[DKW 86 7,438]

We have a lot of people poo-pooing any idea that really addresses fixing the issues. 

Some of yall are sad puppies. When I coached peewee football, I soon realized that I was going to have go get the kids, dress the kids, feed and water the kids. Their prents were too busy drinking all day to do any of that. These kids need to get out of the house so that they can see a different side of the world. All they see is extremely poor parenting and that no one cares. They have to see that someone does care, that they matter, and that the world is not laying up stoned all day. 

[rhughes 59]

3 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

We have a lot of people poo-pooing any idea that really addresses fixing the issues. 

Some of yall are sad puppies. When I coached peewee football, I soon realized that I was going to have go get the kids, dress the kids, feed and water the kids. Their prents were too busy drinking all day to do any of that. These kids need to get out of the house so that they can see a different side of the world. All they see is extremely poor parenting and that no one cares. They have to see that someone does care, that they matter, and that the world is not laying up stoned all day. 

And the people who can't take of themselves seem to have the most children.  I have been in education for 20 years now and it is truly sad to see what our society has become and where it is going.  It's a cycle that needs to be broken and it starts with our young people.  

[johnnyAU 3,637]

Even though I've met many couples over the years that would have made great parents, but chose not to have kids, there are tons more out there that should never have been parents.  Just awful.