The Forge's Abolitionist Issue aims to capture the "State of Abolition" and provide an overview of not only what modern abolitionists are doing, but the logic and experience that is driving the work. These are a series of reflections from the Abolitionist Gathering which occurred in 2022, two years after the 2020 Uprisings. Much of this work was either produced by participants during the conference or through reflection on their organizing afterward.
What Time Is It?
Abolitionist organizing is an orientation, both a politic and a practice, an approach that lights our many paths to a new world. Abolition asserts a world without surveillance, policing, incarceration, criminalization, or economic coercion and oppression. It prefigures a world of liberation across areas of life and sites of struggle too often artificially siloed: housing, health, climate justice, migrant justice, and more.
As Andrea Ritchie explains, “organizing is an ongoing process that extends beyond protests and mass mobilization, that is rooted in building relationships, sharing knowledge, analysis, and skills, and strengthening communities.” Abolitionist organizing compels us to work at the speed of trust and relationships, pace ourselves and care for each other.
The tremendous growth in participation in abolitionist movements in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and hundreds more Black people across the US since the Spring of 2020, is an outgrowth of lifetimes of abolitionist organizing and scholarship, much of it envisioned and practiced by Black feminists. As we ask “what time is it on the clock of abolitionist organizing?” we are called to remember that, much like time itself, the progress of abolitionist movements may seem linear, but in reality, bends, expands, and contracts. What makes both real is our commitment to each other to make them so and to recognize the multiplicity of experiences that shape them. As abolitionist movements continue to shift as conditions evolve, we remember that waves crash and recede, and yet continue to shape the shoreline.
Building alliances and capacity with other values-aligned organizations is so necessary to continue the sustainability of this work. We’ve learned that this work is truly urgent, but moving at the speed of trust and capacity is what keeps us in the fight.
-Hanan Robinson, Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro
In the summer of 2022 Black Visions, Interrupting Criminalization, The Forge, and Liberation in a Generation hosted Abolitionist Organizing: Towards a World Beyond Police and Prisons as a network gathering of the Allied Media Conference. Over two hundred and fifty people representing dozens of formations from across the country gathered online over two days to root in shared experiences, learn together, and affirm our abolitionist praxis through connection. This issue of The Forge is a reflection - admittedly imperfect and incomplete - of those days together. We also asked participants to reflect on their organizing over the intervening year and the following themes emerged. Inside this special edition you’ll find inspiring, griot-style stories from organizers across the country leading abolition efforts in their cities. Included are grounding definitional and framing articles to advance collective understanding of abolitionist history, context and vision. Conversations about the necessary intersections between abolition and topics like housing, migration, and health care are inside too. We hope that these provide foundations for generative conversations about abolitionism organizing.
The Movement to Defund and Decarcerate Is Alive and Well
As you’ll see from the feature articles on the struggle to #StopCopCity, the Dream Defenders’ ongoing fight to build safer communities in increasingly hostile territory, and the “Stories from the Frontlines,” organizers across the country are advancing budget fights, commanding media attention as a political strategy, preventing new jails and closing existing ones, and forging allyship in fights designed to pit our communities and interests against one another.
[We have been able to] form critical consciousness and understand the depths of the historical roots of local-national (USA) and transnational (Rest of the World) systemic racism, while demanding short and long term changes in public policies that can generate the necessary transformations. These two changes (Awareness and Proposals in Public Policies) are more palpable after the Uprising.
-Welmo E Romero Joseph, Organizador Comunitario Taller Salud
These beautifully told stories illuminate how abolitionist organizing work is continuing to invite new visions for the future, produce material changes for people in their communities, and assert power and influence over how our collective resources are distributed. Reflecting on the last few years, organizers share that deepening our understanding of our politics, being prepared for adversarial attacks, and being willing to use diverse tactics are all part of what it looks like to build power in our communities.
Continuing Challenges
Taking on the violence of policing and punishment and fighting for decriminalization, decarceration, and divestment from death-making institutions and investment in collective care takes a toll on us as individuals, organizations and communities.
I want our leaders to value thriving and all aspects of life including expressions of artistic creativity and joy and care, not funnel us into hyperfocused drives that end up being as elitist and isolating as some of the institutions we want to abolish.
-angelique/omi
The Network Gathering featured several conversations about the care necessary to sustain abolitionist work. Reflections on the last few years highlighted the struggles of recognizing when what could look like a win would actually be a setback (as Makia shared about building revenues from discriminatory practices); acknowledging that allies may fall away when the going gets tough or when we are saying directly what we need or we’re unwilling to negotiate our values; and holding that our organizations will likely not be able to hold all of our individual burnout and trauma. All of these challenges take time to acknowledge and reckon with, ideally in relationship with one another.
The past three years have also sharpened questions about how we relate to the state in the context of abolitionist struggles - as an organizer from Freedom Phoenix framed the question during the network gathering, "how are y'all working through the role the state would play in where the funds from the police state would go to? Did they have a role at all in deciding where these funds went? What did that look like? How did you resolve the issue of accountability to the police state when we tie ourselves to it through funding?" Interrupting Criminalization has created a discussion tool and ‘zine series to support organizers in deepening their analysis and practice around these questions.
We are entering an era where we have to fight against blatant attacks of white supremacy regarding trans rights, critical race theory (real American history) bans, and reproductive rights. Now is the time for white people to really be talking with their people, not just yelling at them and virtue signaling, about how these bans and policies are deeply harmful. Now is the time for white people with money to give to those who are being impacted by these bans, inflation and the increase in police brutality. White people really need to understand the longevity of this work and not just show up when it's convenient or makes them feel good.
-Hanan, Black Lives Matter, Phoenix Metro
Several participants reflected on the difficulty in maintaining allyship in the months and years after George Floyd’s murders. Participants shared that at the same time, the Right has gained momentum and presence by baiting fear among white people threatened by the success of demonstrations, protests, campaign wins and policy changes. This fear doesn’t just stay stateside. Welmo shares “To this we add the presence of Donald Trump as a flammable and destabilizing accelerant that creates the perfect storm for the presence and intensification of the Right in the political and cultural activities of the Americans and therefore its influence in the political scenarios of other countries of the globe.”
What’s Next
Throughout the Network Gathering and follow up conversations and reflections, themes illuminating what time it is on the clock of abolitionist organizing emerged. Clearly, we need to continue building collective practices for avoiding, addressing, and healing from burnout, and to reground, regroup, and recommit to the long struggles ahead as conditions worsen.
Continuing to gather to share information, fortify ourselves against opposition, and find fellowship will continue to strengthen our strategies, tactics and our individual and collective wholeness. Keeping narratives clear and standing in our truths keeps us in the long arc and networked web of abolitionist work, directly asking for what we want to end and build, and continuing to tell the stories of the wins and challenges of our communities. Echoing Mariame Kaba’s invitation, Makia Green affirmed that, as we build toward abolitionist futures, we must practice millions of experiments to identify the structures and processes that create safer, more just communities.
