In our new series – Towards Gentler Futures – we do deep dives into the core ideas that TJC’s work is rooted in. This month, we look at what ‘abolition’ means to us.
What is abolition?
Abolition acknowledges that the future we are trying to build together is not predetermined, but remains unknown.
Through a conscious and collective effort to turn it into a commitment to human freedom, we will eventually be able to transform and move closer towards a gentler future for all.
“Abolition is about building life-affirming institutions. Laying a new foundation under, around, and in the cracks of the old world until the old foundation is no more.”
-Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Abolition attaches new meanings and standards of harm, danger and safety. This also means asking who produces them and who can safeguard us from them.
By rejecting disposability of any person and responding to pain with care, instead of violence, we shift the attention, resources, and political will towards solutions that do keep society safe and finally shape a society where all forms of life can survive and thrive.
Working towards a society free from
- Prisons and prison-like institutions (involuntary detention)
- Policing
- Enslavement
- Surveillance
- Violence
- Punishment and revenge
- Shame
- All kinds of carceral, coercive and punitive logics, cultures and systems designed to control, deprive and discard.
Disentangling harm and crime
We need to disentangle harm and crime. All that is harmful is not always criminalised. All that is criminalised is not always harmful.
Examples of non-criminalised harm: toxic chemical leaks, wage theft, genocides, wars, denying life saving medicine, systematic discrimination towards marginalised communities
Examples of criminalised actions: milk powder theft, criticism towards the state, showing up for human rights
Abolitionist thought
The adversarial nature of the court systems discourages people from ever acknowledging, let alone taking responsibility for the harm they’ve caused. For those who have been harmed, it forces them to be punished for actions they did not commit.
Abolitionists do not believe that our systems are broken. We believe that they are exactly working the way it was designed to do – surveilling, policing, imprisoning, torturing, and killing the people it targets.
Abolition resists the idea of normalising harm and aims to establish a creative and generative project to go beyond the limitations of not only what we currently have and how to make it better, but also to think of ‘what kind of world do we want to live in?’
Building a different world is not just about changing how we address harm, but changing everything that signals and entrenches disposability.
Examples of entrenched disposability:
- students who are not performing as expected are pushed out of schools
- people with disabilities being excluded from communities
- workers are being treated as expendable
Abolition does not promise a world where we no longer harm each other, but changing how we attend and respond to that harm and how we choose to transform that harm.
It is committing to struggle with each other and turn towards the harm rather than turning away, eliminating, or dominating others.
Transformative Justice Collective 