this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Abolition of police and prisons

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Abolish is to flourish! Against the prison industrial complex and for transformative justice.

See Critical Resistance's definitions below:

The Prison Industrial Complex

The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.

Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for "tough on crime" politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.

Abolition

PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

From where we are now, sometimes we can't really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.

Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.

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[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And he's entirely wrong, and as is generally the case, because he doesn't understand or is deliberately misrepresenting the concept of a "right."

Literally all peaceful protests are protected - that's exactly what it means when the Bill of Rights stipulates a RIGHT to assembly. The exact point of defining it as a right is to stipulate that it's inalienable - that we can legally assemble always, no matter what.

He's conflating a different aspect of the whole thing. Yes - trespassing, for instance, is a crime, and police are not only allowed to but duty-bound to respond to trespassing, and trespassers - even if they're protesting - are rightly subject to legal repercussions.

But that doesn't somehow make the protest itself illegal - it is and always remains legal, as is our right. Specific individuals guilty of trespass can be and presumably will be subject to arrest for their trespass, but the protest itself is and must remain legal. That is exactly what is meant by stipulating a RIGHT to assemble.

For whatever any of that's worth, since at this point not only police officers but even Supreme Court justices have no honesty or integrity and can and will simply ignore whatever they find inconvenient.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your point about trespassing is an important consideration. The ever vanishing public spaces as corporations gobble up massive tracts of land, pose a major threat to our right to protest. Where will we protest when every inch of the city is privately owned?

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Same places, just not legally.

[–] AnarchistArtificer 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Bad cop, no doughnut

Edit: typo