REadings

Abolition for the People

Discussion guide

READERS GUIDE

What is decolonization and how does it relate to 1) the UN’s 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and 2) the abolition of the carceral state?
Morning Star Gali defines “settler colonialism” as “the violent uprooting, removal, and displacement of Indigenous peoples through criminalization and dispossession from our lands, communities, culture, and traditional lifeways.” How do you believe settler colonialism works in practice? Please cite a few examples relevant to your own life.
What, according to the author, constitutes the “first institutions of incarceration within California”? How do those institutions play out today?
According to the author, what is healing? How does the author’s analysis of healing relate to abolition? And how does the author’s definition of healing relate to your own life?

READERS GUIDE

Dean Spade writes that disproportionately “queer and trans people have been and remain targets of the police.” What evidence does the author use to make this argument?
What was the Stonewall Rebellion and why is it an important flashpoint in the long history of queer and trans activists protecting against police violence?
The author discusses “pinkwashing” and argues: “Often police and prison expansionists have happened in the name of fixing or reforming purportedly ‘broken’ systems. They have hired cops of color, women cops, even LGBT cops. They have added training. They have created countless policies prohibiting police violence. They have created special cages for vulnerable groups. Each reform adds more cops, more cells, or more dollars to a system that is devouring our communities.” Please cite a few real-life examples of these types of reforms in action. Further, what is the relationship between these reforms and police violence?
Where does the author suggest funding for police should be reallocated? What are your thoughts on this proposal?

RESOURCE(S)

READERS GUIDE

What is “e-carceration”? Describe some key features and characteristics of the “e-carceration” movement.
What is racial capitalism? How does James Kilgore describe the relationship among “e-carceration,” surveillance, and racial capitalism?
The author gives examples of resistance to “e-carceration.” Please list them.
The author urges that we must “call for technologies of liberation that open new opportunities, not technologies that confine us to our houses and neighborhoods with geo-fences.” In your view, what might some of these technologies in support of abolition look like?

READERS GUIDE

Cristina Jiménez Moreta and Cynthia Garcia write that with bipartisan support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the two agencies primarily responsible for immigration enforcement, have continued to carry out a racist and white supremacist agenda, targeting immigrants- particularly Black and Brown immigrants- for detention and and deportation with little oversight or accountability. How has their organization, United We Dream, sought to challenge the xenophobia and white supremacist agenda of ICE and CBP?
In 2002, then-President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The establishment of this department has had negative cascading consequences for immigrant communities- particularly immigrant communities of color. Please describe.
Based upon this essay’s arguments, what are the connections between the prison system, anti-immigration policies, xenophobia, and racism in the United States?
In your view, how have the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations’ immigration policies and impacts overlapped?