As the powerful movement to abolish policing and imprisonment has come further into the spotlight, it’s been met with a flurry of questions: Where did this movement come from? Does “abolish” Really Do you mean to abolish? What does the reality of sexual violence look like for prison abolitionists? What are their views on gender violence? Organizers and scholars have made it possible to create awareness about gender violence. abundanceOf resourcesThese questions can be addressed with tools and resources. Abolition is in part a movement of collective engagement and analysis-sharpening that encourages living conversation. Into that conversation comes a new book — Abolition. Feminism. Now. — written by renowned authors and organizers who’ve been doing abolitionist work for decades: Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie.
Abolition. Feminism. Now. chronicles many strands of abolitionist history, showing how, from the start, feminism — and in particular BIPOC-led anti-carceral feminist responses to mainstream white feminist movements — played an integral role in the movement to abolish the prison-industrial complex. The book starkly exposes the deep harms of carceral feminism, which relies on policing and criminalization to “address” gender and sexual violence, and shows that incarceration isItself a form of gender violence, citing organizer Monica Cosby’s work on how “prison is abuse.”
The book also shows the immense reach of prisons systems and policing (including electronic monitoring and less-recognized forms like the ICE). family policingsystem), and their impact on women, trans, and nonbinary people, especially Black and Indigenous people, immigrant, working-class, disabled, and other people. Not only are the systems to be reformed, but so is their impact on women and trans people. Abolition. Feminism. Now.It is important to emphasize that wherever oppressive systems existed, there were movements to resist them and to create a just, life-affirming, feminist society in their place.
The book reminds us to remember that abolition does not just involve the work of dismantling but also involves building and creating. The book features grassroots groups that are dedicated to abolition of feminism. These include organizations that were founded in the early 2000s like INCITE, Critical ResistanceAnd Creative Interventions,To more recent efforts like Survived & Punished, Love & Protect,The Palestinian Feminist Collective,These and many other topics. The authors emphasize that abolition is a collective project composed of many community-based campaigns, support networks, mutual aid groups and relationships, dedicated to “building flourishing communities for the long haul.”
I met with Angela Davis (Gina Dent), Erica Meiners, Beth Richie, and Erica Meiners on Zoom to discuss abolition of feminism, internationalisms, art, the process for writing a collaborative book in an epidemic, the importance documenting movement work, as well as how their book might be used around the world.
Maya Schenwar: This book really meant a lot to me to read, as an abolition feminist myself — and you all are a big part of what brought me to abolition feminism. Also, I’m in the collective Love & Protect [which supports women, trans and gender-expansive people of color impacted by state and interpersonal violence]Thank you for mentioning it in the book. I was thrilled to see so much grassroots abolition feminist work highlighted.
Toward the beginning of the book, you quote Mari Matsuda as saying that “A feminism that can truly challenge domination is one that’s flexible enough to ask the other question.” She says: “When I see something that looks racist, I ask, ‘Where is the patriarchy in this?’ When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, ‘Where is the heterosexism in this?’ When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask, ‘Where are the class interests in this?’” This idea of “asking the other question” surfaces at other times in the book, and I found it to be one of the keys to understanding your project. Would one or more of you like to start by explaining what it means to “ask the other question” in the context of your book, and how it’s important to abolition feminism?
Gina Dent:Erica may have used it first. It was a keystone for us all throughout the project. We really made sure to weave that theme throughout so that people could understand that abolition feminism requires this dexterity and movement very much akin to what people sometimes talk about when they’re talking about gendered labor, and the way in which, especially women, move through the world — that there’s always a need to recalibrate, to figure out, to reschedule, to multitask.
That is the kind of scrappy work that abolition feminism is. It’s the work of doing the everyday low-level, low-scale attending to people individually and collectively. It’s also, and we think importantly, the necessary theoretical examination of the practices that we’re engaged with so that we also are simultaneously focused on the long view, and on the things that maybe are not in our immediate community world, but require our attention.
Erica Meiners: We’re thinking about “What is abolitionist about feminism?” — in terms of our histories, both collectively and individually — but also “What is feminist about abolition?” I think that that framework of “asking the other question” that Matsuda raises was really a theme to try in this project, of trying to get both abolition and feminism to be asking the other question of Each otherYou can also.
Beth Richie:I want you to look back at how you started, and show your appreciation for the work that is being done on the ground. To me, when I think about Love & Protect, for example, and that work on the ground, that is always “asking the other question.” How do we get people free, and welcome them home … responding in a mutual-aid way to what people need today, tomorrow, the next day; write letters, talk to families? Also, how do we make sure that it’s not just that, but also lifting up the Get largerQuestions around the structural conditions that lead to the mass criminalization and exploitation of survivors? How can you do both? To me, it’s also asking the question: When I’m writing the letter, what am I doing tomorrow about the structural inequality? While I’m working on the structural questions … how are we welcoming people home?
Angela Davis: That impulse to always “ask the other question” represents something very important about the anti-racist, anti-capitalist feminism we refer to in the term “abolition feminism.” We use “feminism” not only to refer to issues of gender and sexuality but rather to refer to that impulse that is often named as intersectionality. (I’ll say parenthetically, intersectionality has become a concept that doesn’t always open up new ideas and new thinking; it’s a concept that is often used simply to name an existing process.) Mari Matsuda’s insistence on always asking the other question allows us to formulate a feminism that does not subscribe to closures, that does not attempt to provide definitive answers to the question, but rather encourages an ongoing process of articulation, disarticulation, re-articulation — terms we get from Stuart Hall. This, I believe, is the heart of what we mean when we refer to feminism.
Schenwar: Thank You, All of you! I was impressed by the inclusion of many examples of abolitionist feminist projects from around world, beyond the United States. These include Australia, Germany, India, the U.K., Palestine, and Australia. Sometimes, in conversations about incarceration here in the U.S., there’s a national focus that ignores the global context, but you are infusing this book with an internationalist vision. Could you explain a little bit about why it’s important to recognize abolition as an international project?
Dent:We all agreed very early on that we needed to use an internationalist approach. I’ll say that it’s more internationalist than it is truly representative of the globe — we tried to stick to organizations that we had some relationship with … that were key to how we’ve developed our understandings.
It’s so important for us to disrupt the narrative that’s been developed inside the United States, which is sometimes helpful when people are talking about mass incarceration but also can do some damage. For example, I often find that people talk only to me about Black people, sometimes even Black women, if they have that focus in prison and jail — yet are not talking about immigrant detention, are not talking about Indigenous incarceration, are not talking about the other kinds of factors that make incarceration a problem, which can’t simply be addressed by undoing anti-Black racism. It was important to us, to think about what true liberation would be like, to incorporate a whole range of perspectives and to try to illustrate the ways in which our knowledge fails us if we don’t attend to the multiple ways in which we are engaged.
The prison-industrial complex is a global capitalist entity, and therefore, an approach that myopically focuses on the United States — which sometimes can be excused because of our international role in generating the practices of incarceration — is actually a problem in terms of our ability to address the fundamentally international problem of the prison-industrial complex.
Davis:We were also aware of the extent to that Black feminists in the U.S. have been held up as the measure of Black Feminism everywhere. Some of us have had the experience of traveling to Brazil and being lifted up as the examples of Black feminism — at the same time as the traditions in Brazil, which are deep and which hold lessons not only for Brazilians but for us in this country, are then ignored. We are all internationalists. We use the term “internationalism” instead of transnational feminism because we want to refer to an era of connection across borders and between nations.
We also want to suggest a future without borders, walls, or nation-states. Our analysis must include an international dimension. It’s not just tacked on. It is the core of what we want to do.
Richie:Part of the writing process for this book, I think, all of us, but especially for me, is how much each of us learns from one another. Angela mentioned that one of the most inspiring and valuable things I did was not add on the kind of add-ons that Angela mentioned. I was trying to improve my writing and, more importantly, my thinking to be more internationalist. While the book may look like it does, I believe that the process is worth highlighting because it allowed us to share our experiences and learn from each other. We all looked at it from very different perspectives. I feel like one gift was the opportunity to learn from each other about [internationalism]Amongst them, however, are many other things.
Meiners:This is not an exhaustive list. While we were working on this project, we learned about new campaigns, initiatives, and projects. This was a real challenge. [to]How to represent something active, that is in the process of unfolding? Now — and that internationalist lens gave us a framework and a balance. We don’t want people to see this as an exhaustive finite list. [of abolitionist efforts]. We’re excited about the kind of projects that other people are going to build in conversation with this — documenting different kinds of work, or sharing different kinds of projects.
Schenwar: One thing that struck me really deeply about the book was its recurring discussion of how important it is to document the history of abolitionist movements and campaigns even when they “fail” by some external measurements. You talk about doing “slow work in always-urgent times.” I’m wondering if you could explain a little bit more about why you chose to focus on the stories of so many grassroots projects that have not resulted in some grand legislative change or obvious mainstream victory.
Meiners:We all recognize that these are the movements that have built the world we want. Having participated in these clusters, in these campaigns, in these projects, in these organizations that do the slow work in the urgent times — this is what has built the moment that we’re in now. Of course, “victories” — and I think that’s a complicated term — matter. Whether someone is executed or released, or whether a jail building is constructed. We’re not diminishing the importance of those tangibilities, those material outcomes. But we’re also trying to lift up the movements, the organizations, the collectives that have actually changed consciousness, changed language, changed cultural lenses.
Davis: We’re really indebted to Erica for insisting on this. It allowed us to all develop a new philosophy of history and a new historiographical approach. How does change happen? We’re always urged to subscribe to the idea of the “great man in history,” the “great man” figure who changes history…. Erica gave us the gift of asking us how we view all these small formations, even if they were only temporary, and how they shaped the way we think about the issues, the level of discourse, and the way that we fight around them. I always refer to the fact that it were the Black women maids of Montgomery who refused the bus ride and made that boycott successful. However, nobody talks about them.
Richie:Movements are built through hard work, not by success. Movements are built by connections between people who not only share analysis, but also fall in love with each other, and movements are built because there’s a sense of care that emerges. Love & Protect, to me, is the perfect example. There’s radical work happening, and there’s also care about each other’s lives and losses, and sharing food and drink and stories, and all that. I believe that part of it is focusing our attention away from campaigns that win and instead focusing on work that builds a community. You sometimes gain more solidarity when you “lose” and have to reevaluate, recalibrate. I think that is a unique contribution of this book…. It’s really about what you can learn, and what you can do, and how you can struggle outside of the parameters of some more formal, patriarchal, masculinist, white supremacy way of evaluating what you just did. I think there’s a sense of joy, sense of possibilities, a sense of holding each other when you fall apart because you just lost. Chicago is good at that because we’ve lost a lot. We’ve lost people, and we’ve lost campaigns.
Dent:We were very vocal against the gender mainstreaming and feminist expertise industries. The idea that you have — especially as a scholar — your set of things that you’re going to argue, and you are going to be prepared with your facts and your figures, and whatever else. Instead, we were really trying to take from the experiences we’ve all had doing this work, to share that sensibility with others so that it could be, even in the face of all of the death and destruction, about joy, and about love, and about imperfection.
Schenwar, I’d like to speak briefly about the book’s art. The book’s inclusion of campaign posters, protest art, mutual aid art, and memes is one of the best things about it. These pieces were included in the book because of their importance.
Meiners: If you’d asked me 20 years ago if we would include images in something, I probably would have said no, but the work that I’ve had the privilege to do with Beth through PNAP [the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project] has really just reminded me and educated me about the power of cultural products in movements…. Like all of us, I have stacks and boxes of fabulous posters and zines and all kinds of work that really functions pedagogically and politically in incredibly powerful ways — I think sometimes even more effectively than text, than lectures.
Dent: I’ve been involved in a project called Visualizing AbolitionUC Santa Cruz. It’s a combination of work that I’ve been engaged with for a long time…. A lot of times in prison abolitionist movements, the idea is that the visual culture that we care about is the visual culture that tells people what’s wrong with incarceration. For example, when we’re talking about film, people are interested in the documentary that lays out the cruel conditions of this particular facility or another, and many of those films are really important — but it’s always felt very important to me to account for the degree to which people are exposed to ideas about incarceration that they don’t register as FormingThey have their own opinions about incarceration. When people are asked questions about what they think should happen in a particular case, I believe they’re drawing not only on their own experiences — which for some people, if they’re fortunate, are very limited, around the prison system, for other people those experiences are severe. In both cases, the popular culture surrounding law and order and incarceration often surpasses their experience.
The really smart [abolitionist] campaigns have both tried to inject some joy and humor into the work, so that people can feel lifted up by it, but they’ve also known that we had to attend to the long history of visual culture that has represented the prison as normal to us, as something that will remain in our landscape, and that’s always been there. I love the selection of images we included, and we included them even though we wouldn’t be able to show them properly. We knew that they wouldn’t get displayed on the page in the way that would be most beautiful, but they felt like important bits of the archive that we understood and part of the genealogy that we were trying to convey and display. Their inclusion is both inspirational for those who created them and for the campaigns that use them. I think it’s also inspiring for people who might pick up the book and realize that they’re usually exposed to very different kinds of images, and that this set of images might run counter to that and might help them along the road to abolition feminism.
Davis: In lifting up all of these organizations, many of which no longer exist, we’re helping to create a genealogy that holds possibilities for the future. The visual artwork is a similar matter. These are the ephemera that the movement was founded on and which we wanted to highlight as having played an important role in the rise of abolition.
The other point I want to make is that we gesture toward so much in the book that we were not able to really attend to, and one of the dimensions that we didn’t sufficiently explore was the dimension of culture, music and visual art. We started to do that, but of course, we could’ve been writing this book for the next 10 years, at least the next two, and it could’ve been five times as long as it is now. The images represent the importance and development of culture, art, and the role of music. Music is often only acknowledged as entertainment but not as changing the emotions of those who listen to it. The visual image [communicates]In ways that are impossible with our conventional language
Richie: We wrote this book during a pandemic, and I spent a lot of time right where you see me, staring at my bulletin board, not interacting with people…. I populated my space with the images that represented the work, the movement, the people, the struggle, the joy, the art, the communication that’s beyond words. There’s INCITE there, there’s Critical Resistance there, and there are all of these pictures of people, and posters.… When we were writing about the Critical Resistance/INCITE statementI pulled out my dusty, torn copy, and taped it up to wall. It was able to take off the paint when I took it down. However, the images speak more about the life of the work than the words. I remembered people, I remembered places, I remembered discussions.… There’s something about the combination of images and trying to write a book during a pandemic, when there’s hyper isolation, that brought something forward. We all share that we put them in the book because that was the moment when the book was born.
Schenwar: You talk at the end of the book about how you didn’t want to end this project of writing, because abolition is in motion. It is difficult to stop writing books. Your book will grow and change as people read it, use it, learn from it, and fuel movements. I want to know how you think your book will be used as a tool.
Davis:We had many conversations about the type of book we wanted, and it was a topic that we discussed a lot. Should it be directed primarily towards scholars? Should it be directed primarily at organizers? It might be possible to write a book that could be useful to both people who are familiarized with certain types of scholarly vocabulary and those who are not as well-prepared to organize movements. Personally, I was thinking about the reading habits that develop behind walls. Even though they have not had the opportunity for formal education, prisoners who have been in jail for so many years become the best readers and the most fascinating intellectuals of all time. I can see the book being read by people currently in prisons or prisons, or those who have had that experience and are using it to grapple intellectually with a wide range of ideas.
I’m hoping that the book will help to produce many more texts — whether they are visual texts, whether they are sonic texts, whether they’re written texts. We are offering it as something that didn’t enact a closure, just as we don’t think abolition feminism enacts closures. It is hoped that it will encourage people to organize, to think, create music, and to make art.
Richie:I love the idea of letting the book encourage others to do their abolition feminist thing now. I believe it is partly due to the many other books being written right now that tackle the same questions from different perspectives. This book is in conversation and in community with so many other important things that are being written…. We are filling up this little space, and it’s both filling up a space and opening up other spaces. Having it released now means that there’s just so many other chances for it to be in conversation with other people.
Davis:The book is available in the community.
Meiners: The genealogy that we’re attempting to chronicle — which is partial and imperfect — is offering some joyousness and optimism for that long, hard, work. A really important value in particular, in this moment, as abolition is more popular, is to try to grow the work to get people to stick it for the long haul — to have a different feeling and a flavor for how social movements unfold. That’s one of the maybe-a-little-audacious outcomes that we’re trying to seed, because we want to grow the work, we want more people doing the work, thinking about the work. I believe that amplifying all of the incredible, beautiful struggles is one way to show the profound and dramatic changes that these small networks have made. Perhaps this will encourage more people to take on that type of work, stay with it, or keep in touch with it for the long-term.
Dent: I would also like to add that I think of [the book]as a historical corrective prior to the history being written. In other words, what does it mean to know the problems of history addressing certain kinds of populations and certain kinds of organizations and activism, and how can we — in advance of people telling the story of the abolitionist movement — make sure that some people are not left out? When we do crip inclusiveness, and trans activism, and when we do all the other parts that make up this cloth that we’re writing about, it’s about hoping that it will become impossible to forget what made this movement.
This is also about not hierarchizing examples. One of the comments that was made early in our writing about Critical Resistance or INCITE was whether we were exceptionalizing these groups. We talked a lot over something I would describe as considering the examples as ideas. Each example we bring up is not being discussed just to inform people about the facts. Instead, these examples can be used as inspirations that can be carried forward and internalized to do other kinds of actions. We hope that people will feel invited rather than excluded, because that is such a problem for the movement — that it can be discouraging. And the interpersonal problems can be difficult, and the harm, as we’ve tried to mention, occurs not only outside of the movements, but inside the movement — and so how do we attempt to address that? Hopefully, it’s in the feeling that we tried to infuse the book with, that we hope others will feel, and be encouraged by.
