GROWING INTO ABOLITION
Exploring the connection between food and carceral systems
TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. WHAT IS ABOLITION 2. WHAT IS FOOD JUSTICE? 3. WHAT IS THE CONNECTION? 4. I KNOW THIS IS OVERWHELMING 5. HOW TO INCORPORATE ABOLITION INTO YOUR OWN LIFE 6. A RESOURCE GUIDE
What is Abolition? Abolition is a movement that asks us to imagine a world without policing or prisons. It is not a movement of tearing down or destroying instead it is a movement about building and growing into systems that are based in community, care, rehabilitation, accountability and support.
GROWING INTO ABOLITION ASKS US TO...
question the role of policing and prisons in keeping the community safe
build up new systems and ways of being that make the current ones obsolete
Understand that all systems are connected meaning that everyone has a place in the project of abolition
What is Food Justice? Food Justice centers around the idea that nutritious, affordable, and culturally relevant food should be accessible to everyone. The food justice movement goes beyond temporary solutions and instead looks at the deeper systemic issues that underlie the problems within our food system.
GROWING INTO A FOOD SYSTEM THAT BENEFITS EVERYONE MEANS… placing the wellbeing of people over profit addressing social, economic, and racial inequalities
addressing the harms that capitalism has caused to our food system respecting and valuing the land and water that allow us to grow food
What is the Connection?
Abolition goes far beyond simply getting rid of prisons and the food justice movement goes far beyond just focusing on issues having to do with food. Both abolition and food justice work to change systems that don’t work for us. These systems are entangled with each other meaning that the liberation of the food system can lead directly to a world without prisons or policing.
I Know This Is Overwhelming... Thinking about abolition can be overwhelming. So much has to change in order to build a society free of prisons and policing. The project of abolition means you are constantly up against systems and institutions that are committed to keeping inequity in place.
There is never going to be a day where we wake up and suddenly live in a world without these systems, abolition is a process but it is a process that is happening now and it is not going to stop. We are in the process of creating new systems that render the old ones obsolete.
"Hope is a Discipline" -Mariame Kaba
How do you incorporate abolition
Abolition is as much a personal project as it is a societal one.
We have unknowingly
into your
internalized many of
own life?
be against, but we are
the things we claim to
not at fault for that. We live within the systems we don’t support. We live within the systems we are trying to change.
The first step towards abolition is to unlearn the harmful systems internalized in ourselves.
SHOW UP up for the people in your own life. The groundwork for abolition is community and we are all in some way a part of a community, strengthen that. This could be getting to know your neighbors, going to community events, or simply just showing up fully for the people in your life.
DON'T BLAME INDIVIDUALS for the personal choices they make. Instead think of the systems and conditions that influenced that choice. Many people are forced to make decisions because it is the only way they can survive within these systems. Try shifting focus from individual to system.
TAKE ACCOUNTABILITY for the harms you cause. Use accountability as a learning experience to inform the way you move forward instead of getting defensive or deflecting. Harm is not always intentional and it can be uncomfortable, but addressing it is very important. Abolition does not magically take away harm, but it does change the way we address it.
ABOLITION
RESOURCE GUIDE
Books We Do This Till We Free Us
Abolition Geography
By:Mariame Kaba
By:Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Are Prisons Obsolete
Becoming Abolitionists
By:Angela Davis
By:Derecka Purnell
Podcasts The Plurality of Abolitionism Groundings Podcast
Abolishing Prisons With Mariame Kaba The Chris Hayes Podcast
I love thinking about abolition as this living, breathing thing that we can expand and challenge and grow with as a politic, as a framework, as a vision
for
this
revolutionary future
-NONAME