BY: SAHER AL KHAMASH, SUMMER 2020 COLLABORATOR AT POWER IN PLACE
Cardboard cutouts have been an essential tenet to the BLM protests. Handmade, elaborate or simple, these cutouts capture some of the most powerful messages. Among those I’ve seen, the one that has left the biggest impression on me was a very little sign casually held by one hand at Stonewall in Lower Manhattan. Written in black ink it read “Abolish Police”. A sign so sweet and simple had opened my mind to a whole new world ~cue Aladdin theme music~. A world without prisons had been something I'd only been allowed to theorize about. At best it was an academic fantasy and at worst a delusion. Somehow seeing this concept actualized in such a concrete form sparked something within me. It wasn’t just the concept that struck me so powerfully however, but also the particular word “abolish”.
To abolish means to formally put an end to a system, practice or institution. I feel as though abolition is a strong word for Americans because of its deep meaning in our history. The Civil War, the bloodiest war fought on this land, was fought over the idea of abolitionism. In a sort of a poetic way, I find that the use of “abolition” at this present moment in the United States of America, calls us to reckon with the parallels between slavery and mass incarceration, between slave patrols and police officers. In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander argues that slavery never really escaped American society, but rather has been rebranded time and time again. The Prison Industrial Complex and police function to relegate Black people to a second-class status by means of social control, economic repression, and political disenfranchisement. When our justice system criminalizes blackness, poverty and addiction, it denies support to Black communities. These actions justify the exploitation of Black people’s labor in prison and their murder at the hands of cops. Abolitionists seek to end these structures which subjugate Black lives and to replace them with systems that remedy community afflictions with dignity, respect and humanity. I find myself wondering now “what are we waiting for?” Abolishing police and prisons should be realistic goals in 2020.
NYC protesters express their frustration with Mayor De Blasio and police department, calling to defund and abolish the NYPD. Photograph taken on June 10, 2020 at Washington Square Park, NY by Saher Al Khamash.
We currently live under a legal system that criminalizes blackness, poverty and addiction in various ways. The fact that hundreds of thousands are in jail right now because they simply cannot afford to pay bail is indicative of a “justice” system better suited to protect the wealthy and guilty rather than the poor and innocent [1]. Unjust criminalization of poverty and blackness are embedded in all aspects of the system. Take, for example, the sentence disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. Although essentially the same drug, possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine, a cheaper drug used mostly by Black people, receives a 5-year minimum sentencing whereas possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine, a more expensive drug mostly used by White people, gets the same 5-year minimum [2]. Black people are also nearly 4 times more likely to get arrested for marijuana even though usage is relatively equal between white and Black people [3]. People who are economically driven into certain trades due to a lack of resources and opportunities, such as drug dealing and sex work, also face criminalization. Rather than restoring balance to those afflicted by poverty, addiction and discrimination, our justice system is based in stigmatizing and penalizing them. What happens is that the most vulnerable and targeted members of society go to prisons that then exploit their labor, paying them low-to-no wages [4]. There is no hope in reforming an inherently racist and exploitative penal system. Instead, we ought to look at the programs of restorative justice that exist in our society and invest in this method of uplifting struggling community members.
Spokesperson for Revolutionary Communist Party (also known as Revcom) holds up sign advocating for revolution. Photograph taken at Union Square, NY on June 2nd, 2020 by Saher Al Khamash.
In place of punitive systems, abolitionists seek a system of restorative justice. Abolition is not only about ending the police, jails and prisons. It is dedicated to ending the conditions which lead people to them. It acknowledges that there are ways to deal with crime and imbalances in our society instead of locking people up. When discussing abolition, people often ask “well how do we respond to crises without police or prisons?” The answer is by reallocating funds. Divesting from the police and reinvesting in social sectors will not only reduce the incentive for conflict or “bad choices” but also communities will be better equipped to resolve them. Currently police are tasked with addressing a wide range of community conflicts from noise complaints to domestic violence to mental health crises. These are tasks that can be fulfilled by other members of the social sector. We have social workers specialized in domestic violence who could respond to domestic violence issues. Mental health is a medical issue and not a criminal one. There are professionals who are certified to respond to someone experiencing a mental health crisis. Police are responding to calls that aren’t exactly crimes. As of right now, many state police are heavily funded, while social services scramble for money. Between the fiscal years of 2014 and 2019, New York spent 44.1 billion dollars on the police department and corrections and only 9.9 billion in homelessness services and 6.8 billion in housing preservation and development [5]. After much protesting and noise in New York City this past month, Mayor De Blasio has promised to cut $1 billion dollars from N.Y.P.D. funding in the 2021 fiscal year. You have probably heard or seen the demand to defund police among activists. Essential to the process of abolition is the incremental budget cuts on the police force (until funding ultimately reaches $0) and reallocation of those funds to communities’ social sectors such as healthcare, education, and housing. Abolition is not merely a question of abandoning structural racism, but of wanting to create genuine change in our afflicted communities.
Large crowds of people gather at the historic site of Stonewall to mourn the lives Black Trans people who were killed by law enforcement. Photograph taken June 2nd, 2020 at Stonewall, Manhattan by Saher Al Khamash.
I can imagine that for some this sounds extreme. You might even be asking yourself “what about police reform?” Abolitionists argue against reform because as the mainstream response to police brutality, reform has failed to reduce brutality and crime for decades. The fact of the matter is that systems which function to preserve white supremacy cannot reform themselves out of racism; they can only be deconstructed and replaced. Reform may have provoked real change if the issue really was just “a few bad apples;” the reality however, as Ava DuVernay puts it, is that, “the whole damn tree is rotten”. Most studies show that increasing diversity or “cultural sensitivity” training among police does not reduce crime nor brutality [6]. And while Joe Biden continues to propose to enhance “community police,” we have to acknowledge that these officers brutalize and kill Black people too. After all, Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer. Reform often leads to increased funding of the police force for more training and equipment that could otherwise be put into the social sectors of communities. These misguided attempts at reform have only prolonged real change all under the illusion of gradual progress. The inability to address the fundamental racism in our police, prison and criminal justice system has only led to greater repression of Black communities. After centuries of systemic oppression - slavery, indentured servitude, Jim Crow, redlining, overpolicing, mass incarceration, housing discrimination, job discrimination, disenfranchisement and much more - the last thing Black communities need is more punishment. Black communities deserve a system that serves and protects them- a restorative justice.
You may not have imagined a world without police or prisons before, but you also probably didn’t imagine a year like 2020. In some kind of a perfect storm, COVID 19, mass unemployment, and social distancing measures exposed our country’s rampant racism to a larger audience than ever before. Social media in particular has played a significant role in spreading awareness and news, mobilizing agents of change, and organizing peaceful protests. There have been Black Lives Matter’s protests in over 1,600 places, in every state of the U.S., all across the globe and the numbers are still growing [7]. The present moment has lent us unprecedented leverage to finally uproot our nation’s racism and plant new seeds for the world we want to live in. The time has come when we have to decide between recycling systems of oppression or reconstructing systems of liberation. Frankly, I believe the universe is acting too well in our favor for us to do anything but dream big and shoot for the stars we once didn’t imagine.
References
[1] Wing, Nick. "Our Bail System Is Leaving Innocent People To Die In Jail Because They're Poor." Prison Legal News. Last modified February 24, 2017. Accessed June 17, 2020. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2017/feb/24/our-bail-system-leaving-innocent-people-die-jail-because-theyre-poor/.
[2] Vagin, Deborah J., and Jesselyn McCurdy. "CRACKS IN THE SYSTEM: 20 YEARS OF THE UNJUST FEDERAL CRACK COCAINE LAW." ACLU. Last modified October 2006. Accessed June 17, 2020. https://www.aclu.org/other/cracks-system-20-years-unjust-federal-crack-cocaine-law.
[3] "THE WAR ON MARIJUANA IN BLACK AND WHITE." ACLU. Accessed June 17, 2020. https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/sentencing-reform/war-marijuana-black-and-white.
[4] Sawyer, Wendy. "How much do incarcerated people earn in each state?" Prison Policy Initiative. Last modified April 10, 2017. Accessed June 17, 2020. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/.
[5] Ricciulli, Valeria, and Caroline Spivack. "What NYC could do with its $6 billion police budget." New York Curbed. Last modified June 5, 2020. Accessed June 16, 2020. https://ny.curbed.com/2020/6/5/21279214/nyc-defund-nypd-police-budget-affordable-housing-homelessness.
[6] Vitale, Alex S. "The Limits of Police Reform." Chapter 1 to The End of Policing. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2017.
[7] Haseman, Janie, Karina Zaiets, Mitchell Thorson, Carlie Procell, George Petras, and Shawn J. Sullivan. "Tracking protests across the USA in the wake of George Floyd's death." USA Today. Last modified June 12, 2020. Accessed June 16, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/06/03/map-protests-wake-george-floyds-death/5310149002/.
Saher Al Khamash is a rising senior at Middlebury College, where she majors in Global Security Studies. She also loves studying Spanish, Arabic, Religion and Art History and has a passion for yoga, tea and cats!