Thread by @sheabutterfemme

Feeling really conflicted and confused post the #CopCityVote about where to go from here and also my feelings on the referendum. Grateful to people like @DaShaunLH with whom I can share my thoughts, but this thread will hopefully summarize some more.

The vote happened FIVE SECONDS ago, but we got so much national and international attention so it makes sense to want to capitalize off of that but also it is difficult to balance that with moving on the state's timeline. People need time to decompress and debrief

but that also isn't conducive with moving quickly always, which is clearly what this referendum needs. I'm not sure where I'm going to spend my efforts, but it most likely won't be with the referendum. I think people who are passionate about it should continue to be

and I'll support where I can, but the majority of my work has been to base build people in the service of abolition, a inherently radical project that was envisioned outside of the confines of electoral politics. Involvement with City Council was just brushing up against my

comfort level right there. Even as someone relatively plugged in I have so many questions about the referendum strategy and feel as though in some places there isn't a space to say that without being met with "well so you want cop city?"

The movement being so broad and expansive is a plus. But now comes the very difficult time where groups with similar goals but maybe different views on how to get there (or even different views politically all together) must diverge, and I'm worried about how messy that will be.

My partner reminded me of the conflict between #CloseRikers and #NoNewJails (a campaign I was part of). This is the TLDR version from years ago so anyone chime in here but basically the conflict/rift happened when a group of people decided they wanted to work together to close

Rikers. But a huge movement rift occurred when some people decided to back the city's plan of closing Rikers but building 5 additional borough-based jails which members of the #NoNewJails campaign identified as being out of line with abolition.

The conflict was awful. I was threatened before at city hall. Friends of years stopped talking to each other, and a lot of comradeships ended. The Close Rikers campaign was comprised of well funded nonprofits that were working on more reformist work and

#NoNewJails was a more ad hoc group of abolitionists organizing outside of their day jobs. In the end, #NoNewJails technically lost when it came to the big City Hall vote and the city moved forward with their borough based plan. But just as #NoNewJails

predicted would happen, the city in fact did not close Rikers and COVID hit. A really radical movement got swallowed up by the NPIC and those who tried to gain clarity or even call it out were thought of as unrealistic, or maybe ungrateful for what they were doing.

I'm not saying that's what will happen here. The conditions were very similar but also different. There was a lot of harm happening internally across all of the movements/campaigns but the thing that reminds me/us of this is just the idea that these well resourced nonprofits

were so willing to throw down around some facets of abolition, but only in the ways that aligned with what the funders wanted. We were able to see just how negative those consequences were.

I'm really hoping that's what's not happening here. I'm hoping the referendum is successful and then everything is voted down and cop city isn't built. But I'm not sure if my heart can take getting involved and finding out.

When those of us say we abstain from electoral politics we are often met with accusations of ideological purity. We are being told we aren't being realistic, we are being negative, we are being holier than thou. What if it was simply... we don't agree with each other and that's

okay. We want different things. We both aren't the worst people in the world for disagreeing around tactics or strategy. I don't know if Atlanta infrastructure is able to hold these tensions and I fear the conflict that could potentially arise.

I'm waiting and seeing what happens but I'm confused and a little worried. I feel as though we should be emphasizing debriefing before running to the next tactic. I feel as though more people should be brought in, and we should be able to let them ask questions too.

I'll of course keep organizing with the groups I'm in, I'm just currently trying to figure out what that will look like right now.