Thread by @radfagg

1) The appalling invocation of @prisonculture's work on #PrisonAbolition by a city council member IN SUPPORT of building new jails in NYC teaches us two important things:

#NoNewJails #CloseRikers

https://twitter.com/nonewjails_nyc/status/1184915381938466816

2) First, it teaches us that abolitionists' work of making a world without prisons enticing, exciting, and concrete has had a far enough reach, struck a deep enough chord, that the system is being made to respond at its highest levels

#NoNewJails #PrisonAbolition #CloseRikers

3) Second, it teaches us that the prison/police system is resilient, and can incorporate the language of any philosophy/stance to bolster its own expansion--EVEN ONE EXPLICITLY DEVOTED TO ITS PERMANENT TERMINATION

#NoNewJails #PrisonAbolition #CloseRikers

4) This is nothing new: Terms like "diversity" and "equality" which have been used to beautify the most toxic institutions in our society are a direct response to the far more radical to demands of freedom struggles of the 50s/60s/70s

#NoNewJails #PrisonAbolition #CloseRikers

5) @prisonculture herself reminds us that the current bonds between domestic violence work and the police/prison system are the result of that system offering resources to radical feminist movements, promising to work with them to end DV

#NoNewJails #PrisonAbolition #CloseRikers

6) All this means our work is not merely to introduce new terms/ideas into the mainstream, it is equally to continue to define and educate accessibly about what those terms mean, their roots, and the deeper commitments beneath them

#NoNewJails #PrisonAbolition #CloseRikers

SHAME on city officials trying to paint their desire to EXPAND incarceration as abolition, and power to Black, Brown, poor, working, grassroots movements holding them accountable, protecting our vision of a prison-free world

#NoNewJails #PrisonAbolition #CloseRikers