#abolish pic

[closet-keys]

Abolition Can Keep Us Safe

Defunding the police is just the beginning.

This whole article is absolutely fantastic.

[rosarenn]

Breaking Down the Prison Industrial Complex by Critical Resistance

Interviews with Mary Hooks, Angela Davis, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Summary of Key Points

Mary Hooks describes the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) as the web of systems, rules, and institutions that not only cause such high numbers of people to be imprisoned, but also benefit from it.

Angela Davis explains that coining the term PIC was an attempt to explain the number of people in prison, the racial disparities thereof, and the decline of social services, as well as the global nature of this phenomenon. It focuses the discussion on the larger societal questions instead of the issue of prison in isolation.

Prison is not only a site of political repression, but also the key to how racism works and is maintained in our society; George Jackson commented on this in the 60′s.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes how the PIC has always targeted vulnerable people; it’s just that the precise definition of who is vulnerable can fluctuate over time.

Over time, police organizations have gained power in roles traditionally filled by social service organizations, and have imposed the logic of policing (and especially self-policing) on these services. In turn, social service agencies have internalized the logic of policing, leading the the absurd situation today in which the US Department of Education has their own SWAT team.

The videos are very short, I really recommend watching them directly. Ruthie in particular just immediately begins dropping knowledge bombs; all three women are powerhouses of abolitionist thought.

[rosarenn]

Underlying the prison industrial complex, there's been a consistency. And the consistency has been to target vulnerable people. And the definition of vulnerable has some variation over time and space, and we can see greater intensities in certain times and places and lesser in others

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “When the PIC Masquerades as Social Welfare” a video by Critical Resistance, for the series “Breaking down the PIC”

[rosarenn]

Ultimately, it's about a way to tell a story of humanity, of living as human being, that draws from the very existence of those who are deemed to be other than human, meaning those who are designated under the structures of gendered racist criminalization as being other than human.

Dylan Rodriguez, Abolition is our Obligation

[rosarenn]

It feels like all roads lead to a cage in this country. Whether from the hospital to a cage, from school to a cage, from the grocery store to a cage. We just live in a police state where there is no social safety net to catch our people

Mary Hooks, “What is the PIC?” a video by Critical Resistance, for the series “Breaking down the PIC”