Reform vs. transformation

Hey friends,

Content warnings: murder of Black people by police. Education of white people/myself on racism. Feel free to skip this newsletter if you don’t want any more of that - particularly if you’re a person of color who doesn’t need another white person examining racism in their inbox; white friends, I’d love to be in dialogue with you. I also recommend this piece by Vu Le (thanks to my colleague for sharing!).

I was working on a letter on “rebooting your brain” after the past year of chronic stress but after the murder of Daunte Wright by police, yet another Black man in Minnesota (rest in Peace), it wouldn't sit right to center myself and my mental health. I also don’t want to rush to make a “statement” or say the same platitudes that white people have been saying since 2014 (and before), since these are often more focused on white people attempting to absolve ourselves of our guilt than actual change.

This happened in Minnesota but there was also an off-duty Pentagon cop that murdered two people in Takoma Park, the suburb right next to me. Also in my county, a 5 year old child - a baby - was harassed and berated by police for doing things that children do (I’ve not watched that video and I don’t intend to). Enough is enough. It sometimes feels exhausting to think and care about this shit but it also is not okay to fall back on complacency.

Instead, I’m going to share some brief thoughts on my journey from 1. Discovering racism exists, esp as it relates to the criminal legal system and 2. Being the abolitionist (in progress?) I am today. I’m going to “hi, have you heard the good news about Prison Abolition?” you.

I’m not including affiliate bookshop links because I don’t want to profit off of this. Please buy them instead from a Black owned bookstore like Black Garnet Books (in Minnesota) or Loyalty Books (my local fave). Just be sure not to be this violent ally! I would love to discuss any of the books with you if you’ve read them or plan to.

I also recommend this article by Yaa Gyasi. Books won’t save us. They can help us with the language, facts and understanding to build a better world for each other together, but reading alone is like faith without works - dead (yes, I’m quoting the Bible… I’m going through it, I guess!).

In the summer of 2012, right before my Junior year of college, I read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. This book will forever be a critical part of my education and understanding of the world. Alexander completely shifted my understanding of colorblindness as something that we not only never achieved but instead a concept that created further harm by creating space to entrench harmful and yes, racist, laws. It introduced me to the fuckery that is racism in prison makeup, the drug war, all of that. I read it with a small book club made up of white friends from my student organization, Human Rights Through Education, as we prepared to host a conference on human rights and prison that upcoming year. And the conference we hosted? Only featured one Black speaker. Big whoops, very embarrassing, and one of many reasons why I don’t believe white people when we say “once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” White supremacy is way too easy to fall back on.

In 2017, I read Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea J. Ritchie. In the years between 2012 and 2017, I read a handful of other books on race, policing and criminal injustice, but this is the first book where it really hit me: I really don’t see any way of reforming us out of this. The system was built on antiBlackness and violence from the get go. This book is truly intersectional and examines how police violence and state violence show up in the lives of women, gender nonconforming people, queer & trans femmes, Indigenous women, Black women, sex workers and more. 

In spring 2020, I read the anthology Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement which is an incredibly helpful resource examining alternatives to calling the police and beyond. It features work like Trans Support Hotlines that don’t mandate reporting suicide risk, supporting child sexual abuse survivors without involving the state and more.

And most recently, I read Mariame Kaba’s We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice last month, in community with some other amazing bookstagrammers from around the country.  I learned so much from this book, which is an anthology of her essays and interviews over the past five-plus years. If you’re wondering, ok, I’m on board with not locking people up for drug crimes, but what about the rapists and murderers? I cannot recommend this book enough. Kaba includes a really practical list about how to support police “reforms” and when to identify when they’re actually increasing funding and power going to mass incarceration and the unjust, racist criminal legal system.

So… that’s how I got to where I am today, how I’ve shaped my analysis. I haven’t arrived and still have so much more to do. And I would love to be in community with others who are engaged in this work. I still feel pretty helpless all the time, but Mariame Kaba is most famous for her adage “Hope is a discipline.” 

P.s. If you have the means, please give to Incarcerated Readers here as part of the Stacks Podcast’s fundraiser for Million Books Project. More info here.

This newsletter was not edited by anyone but me. Hopefully it’s not that clear, LOL.