S1, E18 Abolition Is Not a Metaphor

Abolition is not about your feelings! It's the long awaited episode where we discuss in detail what it means to be and practice PIC (prison-industrial complex) abolition. In our What's the Word? segment, Brendane and Alyssa unpack Michel Foucault's concept of discipline and docile bodies to think about the way power compels us to regulate our bodies and behaviors. Today, we read Mariame Kaba's new book We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. We pulled out three important themes that we felt help us understand how we got to a place where we can't imagine a world without prisons: punishment vs. consequences, transformative justice vs. restorative justice, and safety vs. security. This leads us into conversations about non-reformist reforms, the difference between crime and harm, accountability, gaslighting of Black sexual assault survivors, and the usefulness of hope. In our What in the World?! segment, we discuss the murder of 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant by Ohio police, the ongoing punishment and incarceration of Ashley Diamond, and the cancel culture "crisis" and who really gets cancelled (spoiler: it's not rich celebrities).

CW: Throughout the episode we make reference to sexual assault and perpetrators of sexual harm. We describe the medical and juridical process of rape cases from 00:57:00 to 01:01:00. Please take care of yourself as you need while listening.

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Discussed this week:

We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Mariame Kaba, 2021
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Michel Foucault, 1995)
Ma'Khia Bryant (New York Times, 2021)
Free Ashley Diamond (GoFundMe)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 102 is here!

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Transcript will be available on our website here.