growing into
abolition
created by students at the ohio state university and elsewhere
content warning: the contents of this zine contain sensitive topics such as sexual assualt, incarceration, violence, etc. please care for yourself while reading :)
marcus andrews
we will create it.
The most important thing that has helped me grow into abolition is not a single event; not reading any particular book, listening to any particular podcast, or witnessing any particular occurrence. Instead it has been a gradual embrace, informed by more people and experiences than I can name, of a different attitude toward societal change. It’s a commitment to the belief that a better world is possible, and that it is in our hands to bring it into being. In US politics we’re steeped in two dominant ideas: that some things just can’t change and to think otherwise is naive, versus a blind trust in inevitable change for the better. Where there is room for human action, it is heavily limited by entrenched power, erring on the side of maintaining the status quo no matter what voters are promised in exchange for their vote. For all the talk of democracy, within the US political system there is very little for the average person to do, and moreover very little that the political class wants the average person to do. This is a key to thwarting even the most modest, broadly-popular government actions toward social change. We’re supposed to feel heard without believing we’re actually powerful.
Higher education is an important pillar in this system, on the whole serving to train the next generation of elites to manage society, which even includes asking questions and thinking critically...just not too critically. In my experience, it was 4 years in undergrad spent reading Very Serious political scientists debating the management of the US military and economic empire. We were presented with the full spectrum of perspectives, ranging from “the empire will be better served by this” all the way to “no, the empire will be better served by that.” Sure, we read some cranks who dared question why any 21st-century empire should exist at all, but they weren’t Very Serious. The US has been wreaking havoc across the globe with impunity for decades now, so we’re stuck with it. Why not just make the best of it? My experience hasn’t changed much in law school. This is not to bash the entire legal education system - most people are well-intentioned, and I’ve met so many brilliant people and been exposed to so many exciting ideas that I’ve never questioned for a moment why I’m here. But legal culture as a whole has proven to be a shockingly rigid and hierarchical thing. There’s no hiding that much of our law just is because it is, and what has changed only did so after a painfully slow process of overcoming the inertia of tradition; a tradition that served a privileged few at the expense of the great many. It’s even in the language we use. We don’t look for sources to support our arguments, we must be backed up by Authorities. And there’s no greater Authority than a 200+-year-old document written by enslavers and capitalists designing a system to extract more profits for themselves on the backs of the masses, which is selectively weaponized against democratic social change today. The Authorities are okay with prisons, so we’re stuck with them.
But none of this has to be. When we understand our society as historically contingent, based on temporary material conditions that were created by people and can be overcome by people, we can envision a better future. Just because it’s been this way a while doesn’t mean it’s been this way forever, nor does it need to continue any longer. But society also won’t change itself, and designed power imbalances make the path forward difficult. Still, we should not be discouraged from imagining and fighting for the world of our wildest dreams. The world where everyone’s needs are met and the only goal is human flourishing. And surely the best future we can imagine does not include prisons. The urge to cage our fellow humans should be not just unnecessary, but unthinkable. Very Serious People can call us naive and admonish us to focus on more attainable goals. What’s more naive, though, is to believe that our present is our future, and to wield that fallacy against people struggling for a world that’s too just for them to dare imagine. Sure, there are intermediate steps along the way, but we can recognize that without losing sight of a much more radical moral vision. Prison abolition is just one indispensable part of that vision, and it is incredibly exciting because it is driven by people with the courage to face an uphill battle in unapologetically seeking true justice for all, and nothing less. Previously when I reflected on how my attitude has affected my political understanding, I thought of the phrase attributed to Antonio Gramsci, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” But lately I’ve preferred Mariame Kaba’s advice that “hope is a discipline.” It comes down to more than just optimism in what we can achieve, and we need not even balance it with any pessimism. It’s simply a realistic understanding that things can change for better or worse, coupled with an everyday practice of trying to transform the world for the best, not as lonely individuals, but as a collective. This attitude does not replace substantive organizing and political strategizing, but it is a helpful, and I think necessary, starting point for making this project successful.
I certainly have much room to grow, but on this foundation it’s much easier to get up every day, fight through the setbacks, and keep striving to do my small part in making society work for all people.
Pando matthew ditullio
There exist Souls in this ever-expanding Universe, Which are so inextricably intertwined, To wound one, Is to cause affliction upon the entire Network. A Network of mutuality, “Whatever affects one directly, affects All indirectly.” This is a truth of injustice and suffering. But also, this is a truth of strength and fortitude. Through one Another, We nurture and heal. Through one Another, We persist and live on. Not by intentionally sharing or shifting burdens or energy, But merely by existing. Overcoming physical space, distance, time, We nourish one Another nonetheless, Through Our “mere” existence within the Network. Together, We can survive lightning strikes and raging fires. Together, We can take on the conifers. Recognize those Souls with which yours is inseparably bound. This is your Grove of perfectly tangled roots.
abolition v. academia
lia christine dewey
Abolition is a difficult subject to linger on in academia. In a space wherein the archive— the tangible, the documented— is primed above most all else, it’s hard to imagine a sphere in which this industry built on a scriptocentricity that centers whiteness, maleness, and wealth could implode. But what even is abolition in academia when this institution is braided so tightly with the American dream and notions of fiscal success in this country? How do we reckon with the fact that the same institution that promises a path forward for so many is also the blinding halt that closes the door for many others? Further, how do we reckon with the fact that an institution that serves as a key agent for liberation and resistance for so many, contributes to the subjugation of so many others?
Rather than dwelling on the overwhelming concept of demolishing the industry of academia outright, I set my sights on understanding how we can abolish academic connections to overarching systems that further the subjugation of marginalized peoples. One of the most apparent aspects of academia that must be abolished is its connections to the Prison Industrial Complex. Ohio State, specifically, contributes to the oppression of current or formerly incarcerated peoples in numerous ways. First, Ohio State uses the Common App for their undergraduate admissions, an application service that inquired about applicant criminal history until 2019. While this question was struck from the general Common App, the company has since allowed the question to be included in supplemental admissions applications unique to each university. Ohio State has opted to keep this question and ask that applicants disclose their criminal history as a requirement for admission. While the university does make the caveat that they never bar anyone from admission outright because of a criminal record, they are still categorizing a criminal record as something of note that could affect a person’s chances of receiving admission to Ohio State and getting their degree. Given that a vast majority of previously incarcerated peoples are Black and Latinx and that going to college and getting a degree are key factors in class upward mobility, this practice contributes to the systemic obstacles Black and Latinx peoples must overcome to be legible and successful in American society.
Second, the Zero Waste sustainability program at the Ohio Stadium utilizes prison labor to sort through waste created at Ohio State football games. Contracted through the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, the incarcerated peoples that are charged with doing this work are severely underpaid. The Lantern reported that these inmates received $1.10 an hour for their labor, while WOSU’s contradictory report denoted a mere 11 cents per hour. This program deliberately utilizes prison labor because the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections does not depend on the revenue created by sorting through the waste like private companies do. Under this model, the university is able to claim they are doing their part to combat climate change and lessen their carbon footprint, meanwhile they are enacting true and tangible harm on incarcerated peoples by directly seeking out and contributing to their exploitation by the state of Ohio.
As a graduate student and as someone looking to continue a lifelong career in academia, I am aware that this institution which has afforded me so much also contributes to the oppression of other Latinos not as fortunate as I, as well as other Black, Indigenous, and People of Color made illegible by discriminatory processes that scaffold this industry. I am cognizant of the various ways— just two of which are mentioned above— that Ohio State is a noteworthy player in the expansion of the Prison Industrial Complex and how that further entangles any hopeful possibilities for the future of academia. The question, then, for academics such as myself who are cognizant of the harms that academia perpetuates, yet find themselves unable to envision their own liberation without this institution is one of growth. How do we grow into a new academic future? How will we see to the abolition of academic relationships to systems of oppression, such as the Prison Industrial Complex? How will we ensure that the future of academia is truly equitable, for both those within and outside of academia?
abolish me rachael chahoud
I was stripped of my dignity, Stripped of my clothes. Forced into their blue jumpsuit, And sealed shut behind a steel door. No windows, no room to breathe. Sleeping on a metal frame with a 2 inch foam mattress. No pillows, no blankets. For 14 days, my freedom was stripped. I grew into abolition when I was 17 — I was arrested for a petty crime that I didn’t commit. I was kept in a juvenile detention center for 2 weeks before I was allowed to be released to my parents. This can happen to anyone because of our failing justice system. I no longer had simple freedoms like deciding what I want to eat, when I want to eat, or what I want to wear, when I want to wear it. Truth and justice have little to do with how the court system actually works. Choose abolition, now.
but what about the violent ones? eric o’neil
In my experiences discussing abolition with friends and family, the biggest tripping point in the way of identifying with the need to stop caging humans is the question of the so-called “murderers and rapists.” It is easy enough to recognize that there is no need to punish people who commit victimless crimes with incarceration, but almost inevitably following a recognition of this is a consequent feeling that we still need to lock up the people who commit violence against others. I know that I personally felt myself becoming mentally stuck on this when I first learned about abolition. I remember asking how will we keep people safe from violence. I remember thinking that if anyone deserves to be in prison, it must be those who commit the most heinous and violent crimes. One thing which helped me begin to move past this feeling was a friend of mine pointing out that incarceration doesn’t keep everyone safe, specifically it does little to make the 2 million people currently incarcerated any safer. Feeling a need to lock up violent offenders is an important part of buying into carceral logic, which helps us to dehumanize ‘criminals’ and to label them as people who we can morally segregate from the rest of the population by putting them in cages. We feel as if this carceral logic makes us safer, because there are less evil people prowling the streets. Without this carceral solution, we would be in a world of people looking to do us harm. This feeling is strengthened by our culture of crime fighting television shows and news cycles which love to profit off reporting violent crime, and culminates in a narrative where prisons keep us safe.
The reality is that carceral logic does not make us safer. It does nothing to address any of the conditions which produce the behavior we criminalize or to eliminate violent tendencies. There is little evidence that locking up one murderer stops the next murder from being committed. Carceral logic is all about giving up on people, and does nothing to teach new generations about how to resolve conflicts peacefully instead of resorting to violence. It does nothing to teach people to respect people’s bodily autonomy instead of viewing them as sexual objects. Prisons don’t make people safer, because murders still happen, people are still sexually assaulted, and putting people in jail doesn’t prevent any of that from happening in the first place. Incarceration is an excuse to a society that has failed to provide and protect is citizens in the first place, and instead offers punishment of individuals as an afterthought rather than preventing cycles which produce the behavior we’ve criminalized. What abolition can offer when exchanged for carceral logic is a way to look at the problems of murder and sexual assault where we can stop them from happening in the first place rather than accept them as inevitable. What does a society look like where we stop commodifying and dehumanizing, and instead learn to value and love one another? Where instead of teaching people that murder and rape are inevitable, and throwing away those who commit those acts, we focus on providing for everyone’s needs and giving them the tools to live peacefully?
If you’re stuck feeling like we need to incarcerate violent offenders, I can imagine these words aren’t enough to convince you and I appreciate the difficulty. What I hope you can see is how prisons don’t stop people from getting hurt and that caging humans is not a way to build a society where violence doesn’t happen. The beauty of abolition is the opportunity to imagine a world where prisons aren’t necessary, because violence isn’t necessary. This is hard work that requires reimagining systems which create the conditions which make violence a way of interacting with each other. I’ve come to feel like that is work that is well worth doing, and I hope that you do too.
a comic adaptation of
assata kashur’s affirmation in assata: an autobiography
v
comic by gwen short
growing into abolition as a survivor
m.s.
About one in four women experience sexual assault, with rates far higher for women of color and LGBTQ folks; I am one of these women. Very few people know about what happened that. I just wanted to forget, to heal, to feel whole again in my own body. I never reported the assault, never pressed charges. For many years, I wondered if I should have. There were many reasons why I never took legal action—I wasn’t ready to accept I had been assaulted, and I didn’t want to relive the trauma. I didn’t believe justice was possible within the confines of our criminal legal system, knowing that survivors rarely fare well when pressing criminal charges against their assailants. I also wanted to have control over my healing, which felt impossible under a criminal legal system that treats sexual violence as an assault on the state, not on the survivor.
So, when the emergency room gynecologist asked me whether I had been assaulted, I lied.
My physical and emotional wounds were still raw, and the emotions I felt were complex. I had been socialized to believe that I should have immediately wanted vengeance, accountability, and criminal punishment for my attacker, but this was not in any way what I wanted. I not only feared the process that would have followed an honest answer, but I also felt an uneasy cognitive dissonance. I felt sympathy for my attacker, not in what he had done, but in what an honest answer would’ve meant for him too. I was young, and so was my assailant. I did not want the rest of either of our lives to be colored by that one, awful night. I wanted him to learn, to grow, and I wanted to heal. But as I sat with the doctor’s question, I could not imagine any outcome that could simultaneously facilitate my healing while holding my attacker accountable without dehumanizing him. I wanted solutions that would be restorative and transformative, but I could not imagine them. As Mariame Kaba said, “once things are actualized into the world and exist, you can’t imagine how the world functioned before it.” I could not imagine my experience or my healing from sexual violence outsidethe limits of the criminal legal system. I felt trapped between solutions I found inadequate, painful, and re-traumatizing. It was about a year later that I began to imagine beyond the system I had been conditioned to accept.
Yet, as I started to rethink my understanding of justice and began growing into abolition, I found myself stuck on the usual challenge to abolition—well, what about the rapists? What about my attacker? What about those who raped my family and friends? The easy answer was that prisons are necessary to vindicate myself and my loved ones. But, the reality is that less than one out of four sexual assaults are reported to police, less than five percent of sexual assaults end in arrest, and less than half a percent of rapists are incarcerated. Almost all my friends and family who have been assaulted never reported, and those that did felt helpless and disempowered when navigating the criminal process. The reality is that even with prisons and police supposedly keeping us safe, almost all sexual assailants walk free. Prisons and punitive criminal policies are a quick, temporary fix to sexual violence that halt real, transformative change. Incarceration and surveillance of sexual offenders do little to protect society against sexual violence, and even less to rehabilitate offenders. Prisons are sites of violence that are often ignored. Sexual violence in prisons, especially by prison guards, is rampant. Registration requirements and residency restrictions for sexual offenders also increase the factors likesocial isolation, residential instability, feelings of shame and hopelessness, that are associated with greater risks of reoffending. And beyond these consequences for sexual assailants, the criminal process delegitimizes the desires of many survivors to have agency in processing their trauma and seeking accountability.
Sometimes, I wonder what would have become of my attacker had I pressed charges and he had been one of the few sexual assailants thatare convicted and incarcerated. Would he have been rehabilitated? Would he, his community, my school, or some sliver of society have been transformed? And, would I have been restored? Would I have healed better? To each question, I find myself answering, no.
drawing by m.s.
I do not believe my attacker understood the wrongness of his actions, or the ways in which he violated and traumatized me. I do not think he understood the autonomy, dignity, and self-worth that he stole from me. I do not excuse or sympathize with his wrongdoing, but I want to humanize him in the sense that in the sense that he is at least partially a product of the pervasive societal structures of toxic masculinity, cis-heteropatriarchy, and rape culture. Prisons do not and cannot address these issues. Although it is never the responsibility of survivors to teach their abusers the wrongness of their actions, I wish I had the chance to sit down with him, without having to fear retaliation or that my trauma would be publicized, and to share with him how much his actions impacted me. And to share the worthlessness, degradation and fear I still experience to this day. And, I wish he had the chance understand and to own up to the harm of his actions, without fearing a cascade of prosecution, disgrace, and the ostracization that further entrenches sexual violence. I don’t want my abuser to suffer, I just want him to understand his wrongdoing, accept it, and grow from it.
To me, that would be justice. That would be healing.
My experience is unique, and I cannot speak for all survivors who conceive of justice in many different ways, and I especially cannot speak for the experiences of more marginalized survivors. But, I nonetheless believe that an inherently violent and racist criminal system cannot end sexual violence. That is why abolition is so hopeful to me. It imagines solutions beyond just reforming existing structures. It imagines possibilities that would be implausible, if not impossible, within the current carceral system. Abolition reimagines how we discuss and think about the issues like sexual violence by reflecting upon things like sexual education, power, our personal relationships and communities, and our responses and solutions to violence. Abolition reimagines justice, and calls on all of us to reflect on creating the conditions that make a world without prisons possible. As a survivor, I do not want my experience of sexual violence used as aconvenient defense of prisons. There is no easy, onesize-fits-all solution to sexual violence. And there shouldn’t be. I wanted transformative and restorative solutions for the harm I suffered, but my desires were unique to my circumstances, my identity, and the specific harm I had suffered. True justice should emphasize the agencyof survivors to choose their path to healing imagined beyond the confines and without the limitations of the carceral system. Imagining solutions and thinking about the hard questions, like what to do about sexual assault, is difficult, but it is possible and it is hopeful. This is whyI am a survivor, and I am an abolitionist.
a
stream of
thoughts on
abolition emily johnston
But what about the rapists? Maybe you’ve heard this sentiment before when the topic of abolition comes up. The thought was actually the first thought that came into my own mind when I first heard about abolition. I was also naive and had little understanding of how the current carceral state works. When I was raped, I didn’t tell anyone other than my closest friend for over 4 months. I needed to spend that time coming to terms with that horrible night. I needed to know how to tell my mom. I feared the dark. I feared being alone. I feared sleeping. I feared parking lots. Anything could trigger my fight or flight response for a while there. I wanted to be me again. I felt like what I lost that night was the Emily that loved flowers and singing with the windows down. I lost the easy-going nature of my adolescence. I found myself searching for his face in the crowds on campus. I didn’t know who he was. But did he know how much he hurt me? Did he know how much I lost that night? Did he know me?
I wanted to be me again. I did not want to drag myself through what could be years of re-hashing my experience in a stale courtroom. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to a jury of strangers.
Most of all, I wanted him to know. I wanted him to see the difference in my grades, my friendships, my eyes. Why did he get to forget?
Abolition is not about letting him forget. Abolition, to me, is about making him remember. Making him acknowledge the suffering and pain he caused. Abolition is about accountability and breaking the cycle of abuse. Maybe if I got the chance to ask him why, I wouldn’t still be wondering. Maybe I would feel more at peace with my trauma. But for now it feels like my pain is the only consequence of that night. Why should my only options be to go through the revictimization of trial or … nothing? Why can’t we imagine a future where victims get to choose what happens next? Why can’t we put the power back in the hands of the abused? Over time, I’ve found that the version of me that was attacked is no longer the version of me I want to be. I still love flowers and singing with the windows down, but I also love more. I love with a deeper understanding now. I love the parts of myself that are hard to love. I’m even becoming more at peace with the parts of other people that are hard to love. I have taken years to get to this point.
Abolition is about healing and breaking the cycle. Abolition is about providing resources to both the victims and the accused. There is another way.
A Survey of
Prison Abolition in
Video Games michael fahy
Dreaming of a future free from the prison-industrial-complex (PIC) is daunting. Abolitionists are called to unlearn our internalized, reflexive tendency to engage in the “destructive power of punitive justice” and to “flood the entire system with life-affirming principles and practices, to clear the channels between us of the toxicity of supremacy.” PIC abolition demands we open ourselves to the possibility of radically reimagined systems of harm accountability and transformed relationships between neighbors, communities, and government. Luckily, creative minds, primarily in the literary arts, have already done much of the imaginative work for us. But it is up to us to examine our daily lives and find creative ways to be abolitionist in real time. During my first year of law school, I have spent more time escaping into imagined worlds in video games than at any other point in my life (apart from a months-long raiding tear in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm in high school). While playing incredibly detailed, immersive role-playing games like God of War and Horizon: Zero Dawn, I grew curious about how video game designers address harm accountability and punishment in their imagined worlds. Could the abolition movement learn anything from the worlds they created?
I set out to find fictional game worlds that incorporate principles of prison-industrial-complex abolition or at least feature radically re-imagined harm accountability systems. Given the work of authors like Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Marge Piercy, who have imagined abolitionist or anarchist futures through science fiction novels, short stories, and poetry, I was disappointed to find few examples of video games creators who built on these foundations.
Many of the representations I found of prisons and justice systems in video games confine themselves to existing tropes about prisons and incarcerated people. Sci fi video game series like Mass Effect, Deus Ex, and Half-Life feature new lifeforms, technologies, and galaxies, yet only coarsely reimagine 20th-century carceral systems. Their prisons are equipped with digital cell walls, more corrupt wardens, and revived efforts at human experimentation, but now… in space! And underwater! Many games like these feature a prison level or storyline that brings the player into a prison to facilitate a prison break. Some games, like Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, are built entirely around this concept. Batman: Arkham Asylum takes place almost entirely inside the monstrous titular facility after the Joker and Harley Quinn stage a takeover. Batman navigates the nightmares inside to restore order without much consternation about why the city continues to operate such a tortuous place. Even darker, Tychus Findlay, a protagonist in the Starcraft universe, is confined to solitary cryogenic incarceration before he is “released” to society, locked inside a suit of armor until he carries out an assassination to earn his freedom.
Perhaps the clearest example of how deeply the video game industry has internalized the dehumanization of our criminal punishment system is the prison simulator genre. In popular games like Prison Architect and Prison Empire Tycoon, each garnering several million downloads and multi-million-dollar profits, players are tasked with managing private prisons. In some ways, these games shed any pretense that the criminal justice system can be “reformed” by exposing the deeply capitalist and unethical foundations of American prison systems. For example, in Prison Architect, players can invest in larger cells and rehabilitation programs, but government grants quickly run out. Players are forced to compensate by cutting costs for food and drug treatment. Primarily, though, by further normalizing the dehumanization and commodification of people who experience incarceration, prison simulation games feed off our internalized tendencies to treat people who have done harm as less deserving of basic human rights. Even so, some games take a more critical approach and encourage players to empathize with those on the inside. In Fallout: New Vegas, a group of prisoners overwhelm security guards and kill the prison warden, establishing their own settlement in the prison walls. Seeking a refuge from military forces and slave traders outside of the prison, they repurpose the prison’s barbed wire walls, high watchtowers, and strong structures for their own survival. Players are later given a choice to side either with the loosely organized prisoners or with government officials who attempt to retake the facility.
Unfortunately, my initial search for radically different justice systems in video games did not reveal much beyond this post-apocalyptic prison insurrection. However, this brief survey is only a shallow examination of popular games, and the wide world of indie video games certainly carries more promise. There must be existing games that take a more creative approach to healing and conflict resolution. I just have not found them quite yet. In the future, I am curious about how the writers and creators behind deeply empathetic, emotional indie games like Celeste, Outer Wilds, and Moonlighter might handle an “abolitionist” video game.
I love video games for the way they pull me into their creative and immersive worlds. However, our society’s deep internalization of the carceral state is reflected in our current video game culture. Obviously, the lack of abolitionist worlds in video games is not a fight in the foreground of transformative justice movements. But our effort to uproot our internalized punitive instincts must be broad and overwhelming. The more creatively we conceive of abolitionist futures in all aspects of our culture, the more people the message of transformative justice will reach, and the quicker we can grow into the abolitionist dream.
if you like the art in this zine, you can reach out to sam harton on twitter (@fishforbirds) to buy a print. 50% of the proceeds go towards the If/When/How period product drive, which buys tampons and pads for people incarcerated at the dayton correctional center.
sponsored by these chapters at the ohio state university’s moritz college of law: national lawyers guild american civil liberties union if/when/how: lawyering for reproductive justice as well as the university’s graduate student labor coalition