We NEVER need more police, prisons, or military. All of those are simply tools of oppression. Oppression is founded on the idea of punishment.
Oppression is founded on systems of punishment, which manifest precisely as police, prisons, the military, and so many subtler forms.
Every oppressor around the world has always concocted and orchestrated fear-mongering schemes to increase punitive systems.
Just as we internalize racism, sexism, and different systems of oppression, we can also internalize punishment and punitive systems.
So when we say abolish prisons, abolish police, it must also mean within us. Many people have unfortunately become overseers for the oppressor. Canceling, bullying, penalizing. All of that is part of punitive culture.
Now more than ever narratives are being spread to try to justify punishment culture. Be vigilant about social media and media being used to get us to police each other.
From Ayiti, to Korea, to Palestine, to Sudan, to the DRC, to right inside the imperial core.
You aren’t rich enough? You will be punished. You aren’t white? You will be punished. You have a different body? You will be punished. You were born in a country that was colonized? You will be punished.
Do we need more cops on the train? No. Do we need cop cities? No.
Does the U.S. need 750 military bases in over 80 countries? No. And yet all of that is happening.
We NEVER need more agents of punishment. And we have to unlearn that for ourselves too.
No matter what. We need abolition.
No cop cities, no more military bases, no more police. And we also need to stop policing and punishing each other. We need to practice abolition with each other.
Punishment can never be a solution. It never actually addresses the root causes. Oppression punishes us for having different bodies, for being trans or gender non-binary, for being a Person of the Global Majority, an immigrant, or poor.
Punishment causes oppression.
Punishment itself IS oppression.
The wonderful thing is Indigenous communities around the world have been practicing for a long time what it means to hold community in, to help them heal without punitive culture. The path is already there. All we need to do is heed the word.
Abolition now.
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