Can we imagine the future we’re fighting for?
Prisons, policing, detention. We fight to defund these institutions, shrink them, delegitimize them. We are skilled in the language of “no” – we have been in the streets, at City Halls, at jails and detention centers. But how do we strengthen our ability to say, believe and truly commit to “yes?”
adrienne marie brown joined Freedom to Thrive, Movement Generation, the New Economy Coalition, Climate Justice Alliance, and the Freedom Cities network recently to facilitate the first in our series ofEnvisioning Abolition webinars.
adrienne asked us to flex our imaginations and step into the transformed world we’re fighting for. What are true abolitionist solutions to generating safety? How do we scale those up so they become real viable alternatives to prisons, policing, and detention? Can we imagine this alternate future? Can we close our eyes and taste it, feel it?
As we dream, we are folding in lessons from the Reinvest in our Power movement led by Movement Generation, the New Economy Coalition, and Climate Justice Alliance. These groups that have been at the forefront of the Just Transition framework that provides a blueprint to DIVEST from our current extractive economy and REINVEST in a regenerative, caring economy. The Just Transition framework reminds us to use our labor (our gift to the world) both to end the bad, but also to build the new. That is our mandate: to be oppositional, but also visionary.
The prisons and detention centers we are shutting down have finance streams that come from stolen land and stolen labor. We need to return those resources to re-generate community well-being. That is, we need plans with budgets to invest in what we need, not to generate profit for the few.
If, like us, you are ready to leap into our collective “yes” – to use our intuition, creativity, and labor to redefine safety, to build a world without prisons, join us for the next webinar in our series.
Liberated responses to Harm and Hurting
A webinar conversation with movement leaders from the fields of transformative justice, healing justice, and prison abolition.
Participants:
- Mariame Kaba, Survived and Punished
- Mia Mingus, Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective
- Nathaniel Shara, generative somatics
- Xochitl Bervera, Racial Justice Action Center
Date: March 12, 2019
Time: 11am to 12:30pm PST
2pm to 3:30pm EST
Prison Industry Divestment Movement 