”Anti-authoritarians have been great at theorizing ‘dismantling the system’, but there is less emphasis on the importance of building alternative institutions. It is no coincidence that the work of growing alternative relations and networks has largely been invisible in our movements because it is gendered labor. Both the dominant political economy and the microcosm of our movements are subsidized by the labor of those who provide childcare, cook meals, do secretarial work and provide emotional support. Even recognizing these as forms of labor is an uphill battle; we are able to articulate critiques of capital and labor in the wage economy but continue to invisibilize care work in the unwaged economy. A transformative politics requires us to rethink, reimagine and reorient work and its relationship to gender and dis/ability—what is the work that makes all other work possible? How do we foster social relations across generations and communities based on interdependency, resilience, vulnerability, and solidarity? Connection is, after all, the anti-thesis of commodification and at the heart of a truly transformative politics.”
Abolitionis seeking submissions by artists for our inaugural issue.
Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics is a new radical journal which highlights work that encourages us to make the impossible possible, to push beyond policy changes and toward revolutionary abolitionism. Today we seek to abolish a number of seemingly immortal institutions, drawing inspiration from those who have sought the abolition of all systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression. ‘Abolition’ refers partly to the historical and contemporary movements that have identified themselves as ‘abolitionist,’ but it also refers to all revolutionary movements, insofar as they have abolitionist elements — whether the abolition of patriarchy, capitalism, heteronormativity, ableism, colonialism, the state, or white supremacy. Rather than just seeking to abolish a list of oppressive institutions, we aim to support studies of the entanglement of different systems of oppression and to create space for experimentation with the tensions between different movements. Instead of assuming one homogenous subject as our audience (e.g., “abolitionists of the world unite!”), we publish for multiple, contingent, ambivalent subjectivities — for people coming from different places, living and struggling in different circumstances, and in the process of figuring out who we want to be as we transform the world. With Fanon, we are “endlessly creating” ourselves.
In this struggle, we see the voices of artists, and unique insights possible through the arts, as fundamental in both speaking back to existing systems of oppression and imagining different futures. Against the dominance of ‘academic’ rhetoric, Abolition affirms a multiplicity of ways of knowing the world. We aim to include art in the journal, not as simply illustration or supplement, but as a theory/practice of engaging with the world itself. This is a specific acknowledgement that academia (and also the written word, with whatever cultural understandings the primacy of literacy implies) doesn’t have a monopoly on knowledge or on working towards different futures. Art adds to conversations about abolition in crucial ways. Recognizing that the best movement-relevant work is happening both in the movements themselves and in the communities with whom they organize, the journal aims to support and feature artists whose work amplifies such grassroots activity. We invite submissions by artists working and creating outside the ‘white cube’ circuit whose individual practice, themes or interventions engage with the goals ofAbolitionin a meaningful way. We understand ‘art’ broadly to include many different forms and media: painting, video, drawing, poetry, multi-media, documentary, among others.
Please submit a short (200-300 word) artist statement, visual images in pdf format, online portfolio or website, or other documentation that you feel best represents your work and practice to [email protected] by January 15th, 2016.
A decade before the historic Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, another notable meeting took place. In 1837, black and white women joined forces to challenge both slavery and patriarchy at the 1837 Anti-Slavery Convention. This little known gathering was written out of history – until now.
“And the Spirit Moved them” by Helen LaKelly Hunt details the lost radical history of America’s first feminists. Learn more via Feminist Press.
“I practice abolition in my daily life by reproducing a politics of blackness that makes kinship a possibility even as it slips beyond my reach time and again."
”Anti-authoritarians have been great at theorizing ‘dismantling the system’, but there is less emphasis on the importance of building alternative institutions. It is no coincidence that the work of growing alternative relations and networks has largely been invisible in our movements because it is gendered labor. Both the dominant political economy and the microcosm of our movements are subsidized by the labor of those who provide childcare, cook meals, do secretarial work and provide emotional support. Even recognizing these as forms of labor is an uphill battle; we are able to articulate critiques of capital and labor in the wage economy but continue to invisibilize care work in the unwaged economy. A transformative politics requires us to rethink, reimagine and reorient work and its relationship to gender and dis/ability—what is the work that makes all other work possible? How do we foster social relations across generations and communities based on interdependency, resilience, vulnerability, and solidarity? Connection is, after all, the anti-thesis of commodification and at the heart of a truly transformative politics.”
Abolitionis seeking submissions by artists for our inaugural issue.
Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics is a new radical journal which highlights work that encourages us to make the impossible possible, to push beyond policy changes and toward revolutionary abolitionism. Today we seek to abolish a number of seemingly immortal institutions, drawing inspiration from those who have sought the abolition of all systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression. ‘Abolition’ refers partly to the historical and contemporary movements that have identified themselves as ‘abolitionist,’ but it also refers to all revolutionary movements, insofar as they have abolitionist elements — whether the abolition of patriarchy, capitalism, heteronormativity, ableism, colonialism, the state, or white supremacy. Rather than just seeking to abolish a list of oppressive institutions, we aim to support studies of the entanglement of different systems of oppression and to create space for experimentation with the tensions between different movements. Instead of assuming one homogenous subject as our audience (e.g., “abolitionists of the world unite!”), we publish for multiple, contingent, ambivalent subjectivities — for people coming from different places, living and struggling in different circumstances, and in the process of figuring out who we want to be as we transform the world. With Fanon, we are “endlessly creating” ourselves.
In this struggle, we see the voices of artists, and unique insights possible through the arts, as fundamental in both speaking back to existing systems of oppression and imagining different futures. Against the dominance of ‘academic’ rhetoric, Abolition affirms a multiplicity of ways of knowing the world. We aim to include art in the journal, not as simply illustration or supplement, but as a theory/practice of engaging with the world itself. This is a specific acknowledgement that academia (and also the written word, with whatever cultural understandings the primacy of literacy implies) doesn’t have a monopoly on knowledge or on working towards different futures. Art adds to conversations about abolition in crucial ways. Recognizing that the best movement-relevant work is happening both in the movements themselves and in the communities with whom they organize, the journal aims to support and feature artists whose work amplifies such grassroots activity. We invite submissions by artists working and creating outside the ‘white cube’ circuit whose individual practice, themes or interventions engage with the goals ofAbolitionin a meaningful way. We understand ‘art’ broadly to include many different forms and media: painting, video, drawing, poetry, multi-media, documentary, among others.
Please submit a short (200-300 word) artist statement, visual images in pdf format, online portfolio or website, or other documentation that you feel best represents your work and practice to [email protected] by January 15th, 2016.
Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics is seeking submissions for the journal’s inaugural issue. Abolitionis a collectively run project supporting radical scholarly and activist research, publishing and disseminating work that encourages us to make the impossible possible, to seek transformation well beyond policy changes and toward revolutionary abolitionism. In that spirit, the journal invites submissions that engage with the meaning, practices, and politics of abolitionism in any historical and geographical context. This means that we are interested in a wide interpretation of abolitionism, including topics such as (but in no way limited to): prison and police abolitionism, decolonization, slavery abolitionism, anti-statism, anti-racism, labor organizing, anti-capitalism, radical feminism, queer and trans* politics, Indigenous people’s politics, migrant activism, social ecology, animal rights and liberation, and radical pedagogy. Recognizing that the best movement-relevant intellectual work is happening both in the movements themselves and in the communities with whom they organize, the journal aims to support activists, artists, and scholars whose work amplifies such grassroots activity. We encourage submissions across a range of formats and approaches – scholarly essays, art, poetry, multi-media, interviews, field notes, documentary, etc. – that are presented in an accessible manner.
Abolition seeks to publish a wide variety of work and this call is open to various forms of writing and creative material. While strict word limits will not be enforced, we suggest the following ranges for submissions:
Short Interventions (1000-2000 words);
Scholarly Papers (5000-10000 words);
Interviews (3000-5000 words);
Creative Works (open).
All submissions will be reviewed in a manner consistent with the journal’s mission. We are building relationships for a new kind of peer review that can serve as an insurgent tool to work across and even subvert the academic-activist divide and reject hierarchical definitions of “peers.” Thus, our Collective and Editorial Review Board are comprised of individuals who approach abolitionism from varied personal, political, and structural positions. Unlike most journals, our review process includes non-academic activists and artists in addition to academics. Editorial decisions will be made according to principles of anti-hierarchical power, democratic consensus, and with a preference for work produced by members of under-represented groups in the academy and publishing. For more information about the journal, please see our website,http://abolitionjournal.org. All of our publications will be accessible, free, and open access, rejecting the paywalls of the publishing industry. We will also produce hard-copy versions for circulation to communities lacking internet access and actively work to make copies available to persons incarcerated and detained by the state.
To be considered for Issue One, please submit completed work (including papers, interviews, works of art, etc.) by January 15, 2016. Submissions and inquiries can be sent to [email protected].
A reflection on the Vaughn Prison Rebellion from Kim Wilson, who has two sons at Vaughn:
“… At a time when the federal government has targeted vulnerable groups of people in this country, the #VaughnRebellion should be seen as a signal that solidarity includes solidarity with incarcerated people.
The men of Vaughn are demanding better treatment, education, correct status sheets, and effective rehabilitation. They are telling society that they will not be disappeared and forgotten. They are saying, unequivocally, that they matter, and that they will not be denied their humanity even if it risks them more time or their lives.
…
Abuse thrives on silence. I don’t believe that we can afford to ignore the #VaughnRebellion as some outlier event in an otherwise model prison (though prison officials and politicians will try to push this line—hard). We don’t know who was involved in the #VaughnRebellion, but I stand in support with them and with everyone else at Vaughn that is subject to abuse. There are many inside that are legitimately afraid to speak up. There are also those outside who feel as though they can’t speak up because they worry that they will be banned from the prison. This is a legitimate concern, and I worry that I’ll be banned from seeing my sons for writing about the #VaughnRebellion.
This is how power and control work.
This is how abuse works. In the struggle for justice, I can’t allow fear to stop me.”
[Photo: “Supreme Injustice” by Joe Brusky via Flickr]
A key component of an apartheid system is the ability to disenfranchise those populations that may tip the political scales. Currently in the United States there are between 30-40 million residents (including millions of US citizens) who remain systematically disenfranchised. The fact that the disenfranchised are primarily racialized or poor, underlines Charles W. Mills’ contention that America’s democracy continues to be premised on a hierarchically structured ‘racial contract.’Below I’ve compiled a short list of groups in the US who can’t vote, despite living, loving, caring, participating, and working everyday in communities and neighborhoods throughout the country.
If those feeling perplexed by Trump’s rise to power want to build a strong (and lasting) coalition against the Republican politics of hate (and the accommodation of such a politics by some wings of the Democratic party), efforts to expand voting rights, narrow voter suppression, and fundamentally transform the electoral system will play an important role. Racialized communities most directly impacted by these policies have been at the forefront of these struggles since the beginning; it’s now time for those just recognizing these facts to also get involved. The following is a quick breakdown of some of the major groups who live under the US system – some with citizenship, some without – but are nevertheless barred from having a say in the choice of President. Any one of these groups if enfranchised could have made a decisive impact in the 2016 election. Taken together they represent a formidable group that could radically transform American politics. It is perhaps no wonder that Republicans (and some Democrats) are committed to sustaining and even expanding the scope of their disenfranchisement.
(1) 13.3 million permanent residents
Many countries allow permanent residents to vote, yet in the United States those who have attained this status are barred from exercising their franchise. In the rhetoric of the Republican Party, ‘legal’ immigrants are often compared favorably to ‘illegal’ (i.e. undocumented) immigrants. Nevertheless, the Republican Party and some Democrats continue to ensure that all non-citizens (regardless of status) are unable to participate in elections. It’s worth remembering that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, which was pushed forward by a Republican controlled Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, expanded the grounds on which people can be deported, including explicit prohibitions against and harsh penalties for non-citizen voting.
(2) 11.1 million undocumented residents
Current estimates place the number of undocumented residents in the United States at 11.1 million, including 8 million who are actively engaged in the labor force. While Trump (and other Republicans) portray these US residents as ‘criminals’ and potential ‘terrorists,’ the obvious fact is that the overwhelming majority make vital contributions to their communities (both in the form of informal wage-work, as well as unwaged care work that sustains their communities in the face of frayed social safety nets). In fact, 86% of undocumented migrants have been living in the United States for five years or more, demonstrating that the majority have already established strong roots in their communities. The US is, in fact, unique for relying so heavily on undocumented workers (as opposed to regularized temporary foreign workers) for labor performed by non-citizens. On-going struggles for immigration amnesties,regularization policies, and increasing pathways to citizenship for the undocumented are vital to a long-term electoral strategy.
(3) 6.1 million incarcerated or formerly incarcerated citizens
The most common form of systemic disenfranchisement targeting citizens is through the racialized politics of mass-incarceration that strip 6.1 millioncitizens of the right to vote. Again, many countries allow inmates to vote, with participation rates often comparable to those of the broader society they are a part of. As Michelle Alexander masterfully points out in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, imprisonment has been a primary means of disenfranchising African-Americans. There are currently 2.2 million individuals behind bars in the US (including those who haven’t been convicted but are unable to post bail), as well as 3.9 million former inmates. Of this number, 1.4 million are African-American males (13% of the African-American male population in the US). In effect, 2.4% of potential voters with citizenship are rendered ineligible to vote as a result of felony disenfranchisement. Again, prison abolition and prisoner justice movements throughout the country have been agitating to re-enfranchise these citizens. This is a crucial demographic of US citizens who have been stripped of one of their core rights due to policies that are systematically racist in their effects.
(4) 4 million residents of US ‘unincorporated territories’
While the US Federal government has extensive powers in governing its overseas unincorporated territories, those living in these jurisdictions have little to no power or say in who ultimately governs them in spite of being considered US citizens. This is a direct result of a long-history of US colonial ambitions in the Caribbean and the Pacific, an unequal relationship that was recently upheld by the Supreme Court. As a result, the unincorporated territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Marianna Islands, and the US Minor Outlying Islands can elect non-voting members of Congress but cannot cast a vote for President. Most recently, the US Federal Government imposed an unelected Fiscal Oversight and Management Board on Puerto Rico to restructure the islands $72 billion debt through stringent austerity measures. Simply put, Puerto Ricans were not given a say in the matter despite the evident toll it will have on everyday life on the island.
(5) 2.5 to 3 million residents deported since 2008
Along with the above figures on undocumented and permanent residents, it’s also worth noting the 2.5 to 3 million individuals deported during the Obama administration (the highest number of deportations under any US President). It’s worth considering what would have happened if instead of being deported, these residents had been given pathways to citizenship.
(6) 0.5 million homeless citizens
Voting laws in most US states require a permanent home address. This requirement makes it difficult for the (at least) half-a-million homelessindividuals in the country to cast a ballot. While some states allow homeless residents to list a shelter as their address, access to information and other obstacles often impede the rights of these citizens to vote.
(7) Citizens under guardianship and those with disabilities
39 US states have laws that bar voting by those deemed to be ‘mentally unfit’ or under ‘guardianship’ by the courts. This includes 7 states that automatically bar anyone with this status from voting. It is hard to come by precise data on the total number of individuals affected by these provisions, since most states that have legislated these provisions do not keep systematic figures on those so designated. A 2008 estimate placed the number of pending guardianship cases in the United States at between 1-3 million. This is in addition to the everyday systemic obstacles to voting that face the 35 to 50 million Americans with disabilities. Many standard voter suppression tactics have a doubly negative deterrent effect on people with disabilities. These obstacles should be understood as a lasting legacy of a long-history of explicitly ableist legislationin the United States.
(8) Citizens affected by 2013 reversals of the Voting Rights Act (1965)
A key victory of the civil rights movement was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since then State legislatures have gone to great lengths to design policies that structurally disadvantage black,indigenous,latinx and other racialized voters. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, while at the same time Republican-controlled states have intensified gerrymandering efforts through the REDMAP project, allowing for significant Republican gains in a number of states in spite of shifting (unfavorable) demographics for the GOP. As many as 15 states have adopted voter-suppression laws since 2012. While it is hard to come by exact voter suppression figures, it is widely recognized that the deterrent effect is particularly strong on BIPOC communities disproportionately targeted by these policies. One recent study, found that: ““Democratic turnout drops by an estimated 8.8 percentage points in general elections when strict photo identification laws are in place, [compared to just 3.6 percentage points for Republicans].” Another study identified 868 fewer polling stations in states with histories of voter discrimination. Clearly, in a national election that was decided by statistically razor thin margins in a number of battleground states, this is more than an academic concern.
Finally, it’s worth noting that even if all these residents were enfranchised, political parties (and movements) will still have to work on winning the vote (or gaining the involvement of these constituencies) by presenting a palpable alternative to the current system. Civil rights are important and essential, but we’ve continuously seen how they can be undermined by the systemic violation of other social, economic, and cultural/community rights. Electoral reform is only one piece of the puzzle of longer standing social justice struggles in the US. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that America’s selective electoral apartheid helps reinforce the country’s foundational ‘racial contract’ in spite of sustained efforts to dismantle it.
Konstantin Kilibarda is a PhD candidate in Political Science at York University.
There should be no shock at the success of White Nationalist revival. A fog of liberal-progressive panic seeps across the closest quarters, oddly individualizing what some inhabit as a normal and collective disposition of familiarity with emergency under conditions of constant bodily and spiritual duress. In the living room, kitchen, office, school, cafe, park, dorm room, gym, and library there is a steady-sad din: How did this happen, Why such hate, There are so many of them, What will happen to our country, Will I be threatened, My uncle and neighbor lied, What does the world think of us, I do not feel safe, What do we do now, Who will protect those peoplefromthem, How could this happen my god my god…
Wrapped up in the noise, it is worth reminding that this alleged descent into new chapters of state-induced racial and sexual terror is not reducible to the serial reprehensible (though completely unsurprising) tweets, assaults, and grandstanding of the new President-Elect. There are some who understand, because their wisdom is inherited, that the terror he embodies is both long-standing and carried in the thrust of a Civilization’s futurity. This guy was always here, he is the persona his predecessors possessed but disguised so well (though you never fooled me, you assholes), and many of those in the throes of liberal-white-people-panic know this deep down because their revulsion to him is driven by a hatred of the intimate, the familial, and maybe the same.
Throughout the current election cycle, it has been striking to note the ways that privilege discourse has been deployed to demand loyalty to particular parties and candidates. “Either vote Clinton,” one widely-circulated tweet demands, “or admit you’re a privileged asshole.” Bernie Sanders refused to concede to Hillary Clinton because of privilege. Third party voters are privileged. “Ultraleftists” are privileged. Privilege has thus become central to a heavily moralizing language of civic responsibility which demands that the US electorate maintain a neoliberal bulwark against the far right for the putative good of the less fortunate. This use of the concept marks an appropriation, one which transforms privilege discourse fundamentally, from an analysis of white supremacy’s capillary and quotidian power into an individuating and deeply ideological mechanism of state discipline.
“Black death and trauma remains central to the campaign of the Democratic Party. At the July 2016 Democratic National Convention, black mothers whose children had been killed by either police or white vigilantes, in the “Mothers of the Movement,” encouraged the public to vote for Clinton and thereby promoted her path for restoration and change. The assemblage of women who attested to Clinton’s “compassion and understanding to support grieving mothers” offers a profound illustration of the use of black female grief and trauma as a political strategy in solidifying Clinton’s connection to Black communities in general, and to Black women voters in particular.” - Jallicia Jolly
The rivalries of candidates or parties define the political universe of US democracy. However, electoral democracy has always been in a heated contest to subdue or defeat its opponent— abolitionist democracy. Electoral democracy does not seek equity, i.e., the destruction of the master/mistress-slave relation; rather, it demarcates “winners” as free citizens from “losers” — those locked up or locked out of society and political power. Abolitionist democracy seeks and in its most fierce expressions recognizes that structures of confinement serve as roadmaps on a fabled quest to transform the “nonhuman” or “anti-human” into the “human” citizen. That transformation of course is not what is referenced in calls to “Make America Great Again” or “Stronger Together” or assurances by the FLOTUS and POTUS that the United States still is “the greatest nation on earth.” Democracies are populated by humans (including those not fully recognized as such), hence compassion and ethics remain during election cycles. However, electoral democracy presupposes the “human” and agency to be fixed in the voter-as-citizen. Unlike electoral democracy, abolition democracy focuses upon the struggle for personhood to signify the limits of captivity and indignity, that is, it probes the boundaries of legal violence, or illegal violence enacted with general impunity. Electoral democracy maintains that the political will of the people is expressed in its elections. Abolitionist democracy can argue that the political will of (some) of the people is also expressed in police violence. Both are election campaigns and our policing campaigns are windows into national or factional political will and intent.
“Black pleasure is a political act in the era of anti-black (& poor) state sanctioned violence. It is more important than ever to secure healing spaces that revive spirits as they uplift souls. As I’ve learned, calls to embrace black joy become revolutionary in the wake of the dehumanization of the militarized carceral state.” - Jallicia Jolly
more people would be for prison abolition if they just tried to send mail to an inmate even once
for almost a year now i’ve been trying to send a copy of the literary magazine i edit to an inmate who requested one. his prison prohibits any written materials that so much as mention drugs, weapons, criminal activity, or malicious violence of any sort. i’ve been poring over what’s available of the 95 volumes my magazine has printed over the years, and of those found 3 that might pass inspection. the first two were sent back undelivered two months after i sent them because one had a short story that alluded to a playground fight, and the other a poem that used the word “fist” in a nonviolent context. The third was returned for the stated reason that its contents depicted the use of firearms. i reread the entire issue, there’s not a single gun mentioned in all its 120 pages.
while going back and forth with this guy trying to figure out how to get a copy of the magazine in his hands, two of my letters bounced back for unspecified reasons. i learned that inmates are not given their correspondents’ original letters, but scanned copies, often poorly reproduced and sometimes illegible. these people aren’t even granted the ink their loved ones used to pen their messages, or to hold in their hands the paper their loved ones held, if they’re able to receive their words at all.
“it was like that the last day we left the schools. all song. so many songs of the erstwhile schoolchildren freed and the generations crescendoing to meet us.
there was a time when no one would have ever thought there could be school abolition. except the sneaky privatization schemes that sought to destroy the students while keeping the buildings as monuments to how deep their theft could go.
it was the mothers who said it first. how total prison was. how the problem was not only their children being pushed out of school and into camps, but how the children drinking private school kool-aid were pipelined to more colorful camps. matriculating with programmed responses, like drones to kill the willing once they were made.
and the midlife crisis set who protested all the barbed wire put on their years as if learning was temporary. and what did they know?
ultimately it was the natural consequence of all our industrious work to make the air unbreathable, the water undrinkable, and the people uncritically unthinkable. at some point we needed all the different ages to solve all the problems we had excel-sheeted and databased into our lives.
so we abolished schools and prisons the same day. and the people came home singing and welcomed with song. what a noise. what a noise for every age.”
When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, they envision a society as violent as our current one, merely without law enforcement — and they shudder. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.
People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for all? This change in society wouldn’t happen immediately, but the protests show that many people are ready to embrace a different vision of safety and justice.
I have a story in a new incredible Black abolitionist anthology called Memories of Abolition Day! It was a visionary process, where we all imagined a post abolition world together and then each created within that world. It’s one of the things giving me life right now. You can join the writers/artists Monday 8/24 5 pm PST at the launch via webinar! Put out by @wakandadreamlab and @Policylink Free registration here: https://policylink.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UiJZ8bK6RBWO7BAmstE_TA @Amberbuttswrites @blackyouthproject @amir.khadar @ayizejamaeverett @Calvinwilliams3 @donblak @lisakbates @creative_capita @octaviasbrood #Abolition #AbolishPolice #DefundPolice #AbolishPrisons #Afrofuturism #Writing #SpeculativeFiction https://www.instagram.com/p/CEKTLloh3kW/?igshid=11wr84ri1gvqu
Police officers responding to the Uvalde School Shooting have been criticized after they reportedly refused to enter the school to apprehend the gunman, Salvador Ramos, and preventing parents from entering the premises, going as far as pinning heartbroken relatives to the ground.
Every time I think I’ve fully grasped the perversion of American police they surprise me, there truly is no end to the new methods of depravity at the disposal of these fucking pigs
Cops are a terminal cancer on society, sucking in more money every year and using the poverty and destabilization their grotesque funding and violence creates and perpetuates to justify their own existence, and on top of that, despite the fact that cops increasingly view themselves as warriors and apex predators, and despite every cop looking like fucking robocop now because they get more funding than almost every military on earth, time and time again they’ve proven themselves to be the most hopeless selfish soulless braindead cruel fucking cowards on the planet, spineless worms willing to literally blood sacrifice an entire classroom’s worth of school children (CLASSMATES OF SOME OF THEIR OWN KIDS) because they didn’t want to risk their own skin, while the teachers are the ones sacrificing themselves to try to stop the shooter.
Blackness to me is inherently gender nonconforming largely because we will never fit into binary white supremacist notions of manhood and womanhood.
Angela Davis actually touches on this in her novel Women, Race, and Class.
Essentially, she says that Black women may have been considered genderless because we did all the same work as men but then weren’t considered men when it came to sexual abuse, suddenly being forced into these feminine, submissive roles that we clearly didn’t fit into. Once the Atlantic Slave Trade was banned, Black women were then seen as breeders to provide for slaves since they couldn’t be imported. Despite this, Black women, even if we were pregnant, still had to work in the fields and suffer the same punishment as our male counterparts.
Angela Davis goes on further to say that since Black women were never seen as housewives, Black men were in turn never seen as family providers or heads of households. By this point, Black women had acquired an abundance of traits that didn’t fit into 19th century perception of what it meant to be a woman. Also, with the rise of industrialization, white women never experienced that same intensive labor which further pushed them into the housewife stereotype. Essentially, there was this white feminist movement to erase the housewife stereotype but it didn’t include the struggles of Black women because we were never seen as housewives to begin with.
All of this to say: We were genderless and outside of any gender norm within the white supremacist framework.
Please read Hortense Spillers “mamas baby papas maybe” also, we are inherently outside of eurocentric gender norms because the ideals of them are established through a society that seeks to both degender -as well as- hyper gender us all at once, the paradox of which can be viewed as a particular site of violence experienced only by Black people ( we are viewed as valuable only through our flesh, nonblacks do not respect your personhood).
Seeing gender for the plantation in the imaginary that it is made to be will make it clear why even in the LGBTQ+ communities you will find white people who still inherently think its their place to police Black gender and sexual expression (t*rfs, exclusionists, queerphobes). They might be “free” to celebrate the particular conformist ways they accept and experience what queerness is (even if they act like the word is repulsive ive noticed they love the fruits of Queer labor, i wonder why ) but your Black ass is not. If gender is confined as a carceral state of being in our society, then white people are aiming to become the wardens and inherit the keys to the cells.
like I rlly had to dig for this but this is the piece a lot of yall seem to be missing where it concerns Blackness and gender and now more than ever with how yt ppl of various marginalized groups are now arrogantly speaking on and speaking over experiences they dk a damn thing abt
surprised to see this post still circulating! you ate that analysis UP though!
not even necessarily on the topic of gender, but what you said at the end about wardens deeply reminded me of 1) the way Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party just two months prior to his assassination called the president at the time “Ward Nixon” in an interview because 2) like Angela Davis notes of Palestine in one of her many novels, we live in an open-air prison, although to varying degrees. that’s essentially what structural racism is, one large open-air prison where marginalized communities, and in this case specifically Black people, are the detainees, the political prisoners.
gender is just one lens through which we are controlled in this aforementioned prison, transformed into a form of punishment, exclusion, and dehumanization rather than a liberating form of expression. only the privileged gain full access to the latter.
