[id: a thread of tweets from ‘la policia = basura’ (@HalfAtlanta):
everyone who’s spoken on defunding the police or gone to a protest in the last week: do you know the name, location, budget, and history of your local jail, prison, or detention center? are you speaking with folks trying to shut it down? how are you supporting those locked inside?
this is an actual exercise to commit to: learn the name of the jail, prison, detention center near you. learn its history, how much of the budget goes toward it, the human rights abuses taking place there. learn the local organizations helping the incarcerated people inside.
do you know your local bail policy? where undocumented people are housed when arrested? demographics of local incarcerated population? names of ministries doing outreach work inside your local prison? DoC budgets? book donation and pen pal programs? local decarceration efforts?
how many political prisoners can you name, whose stories you know well enough to educate others on? are you contributing to their legal and commissary funds? how are you actively working towards their freedom and supporting those who’ve dedicated their lives to freeing them?
abolition is a framework that requires asking practical questions that create actionable steps toward ending prisons. it requires rigorous local struggle as much as it does wider communication and solidarity. it requires knowing names, faces, stories, histories, and numbers.
which businesses, universities, and institutions have contracts w/ your local prison or jail? what’s the proposed budget increase for the next fiscal year? are the road signs and license plates in your town made from prison labor? can you name your local youth detention center?
last thing i’ll say on this: it will likely be *difficult* to find detailed information on your local jail, prison, detention center. that is intentional and by design, not coincidental. these centers of violence necessarily operate under lack of transparency and accountability. /end id]
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