Session 1: Abolition as Study

Key Questions:

• Why do we study? 

• Why read the past?

• What is important from our history?

• What is the relationship of study to struggle?

• What do we mean by study? What forms of study are there?

• What is abolition as study? 

• What is abolition as practice?

Required readings

• Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete, “Introduction: Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?” (AUDIO)

• Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete, “Imprisonment and Reform” (AUDIO)

• Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams, “Introduction: When History Sleeps: A Beginning”

• Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “Chapter 1”

Supplementary materials

• Article: Robin D.G. Kelley, “Black Study, Black Struggle” (PDF)

• Podcast: Rustbelt Abolition Radio with Stevie Wilson (Transcript)

• Poem: Audre Lorde, “A Litany for Survival” (PDF)

• Primary Source: Fred Hampton, “Power Anywhere There’s People” (1969) (PDF)

Recommended Materials

• Jalil Mutaquim, We Are Our Own Liberators: Selected Prison Writings, “FROLINAN Handbook for Revolutionary Nationalist Cadres”

• George Jackson, Blood In My Eye:

  • “In order to develop revolutionary consciousness, we must learn how revolutionary consciousness can be raised to the highest point of stimuli from the vanguard elements” (p. 12)

  • “Prisoners must be reached and made to understand that they are victims of social injustice. This is my task working from within (while I’m here, my persuasion is that the war goes on no matter where one may find himself on bourgeois-dominated soil). The sheer numbers of the prisoner class and the terms of their existence make them a mighty reservoir of  revolutionary potential. Working alone and from within a steel-enclosed society, there is very little that people like myself can do to awake the restrained potential revolutionary outside the walls. That is part of the task of the ‘Prison Movement’ ” (p. 108)

Exercise

Vision Activity

As a group, create a timeline of oppression and resistance. The timeline can go back as far as you think is necessary to record the genesis of prison abolition movements, and it should go into the future: a world without prisons and police. What are the monumental moments in this timeline (consider using different colors or indicators for oppression and resistance). What movements must we highlight to understand where we are today? What will need to happen to achieve an abolitionist future? Each person is limited to only four events, so choose wisely. Discuss the importance of each event and the collective pathway toward abolition.

Reading Guide

1. What does Kelley mean by Freedom Dreams? Why is the collective radical imagination so critical to how movements take shape? What can “dreaming of freedom” offer as a practice to abolitionists? What does “success” and “failure” of social movements look like for Kelley? 

2. Freire also talks a lot about freedom. What is Freire’s vision of freedom? How does that intersect with Kelley’s notion of freedom dreaming? What does Freire see as impediments to freedom?

3. According to Freire, what is the contradiction between oppressors and the oppressed? What are “sub-oppressors”? Who is ultimately responsible for liberation, and for whom? 

4. If you created a ven diagram for the concepts of “freedom dreams” and “pedagogy of the oppressed” what would it look like? What do these visions share and how are they distinct? 

5. In what ways can we understand education as a frame for achieving liberation as these authors see it? What do all the authors see as the relationship between the radical imaginary and social movements?

6. In the first chapter of Are Prisons Obsolete, Davis introduces the term “Prison Industrial Complex” (P.I.C.), (12). How does she define it? What are some ways you’ve interacted with aspects of the PIC?