On the Road With Abolition: Resources for Abolishing Policing

+ "Cops out of schools" webinar today

Webinar TODAY, Tuesday June 16, 2020: Register here!
COMMUNITY, Not Cops: Abolitionist Organizing Against Police in Schools hosted by Critical Resistance’s K-12 Abolitionist Educators Network & Education for Liberation Network.

Dear Friends & Movement Partners,

Friday’s Webinar On the Road with Abolition: Assessing Our Steps Along the Way was such a success! THANK YOU for attending, for spreading the word and applying the lessons shared in your organizing work. Thank you to our panelists, our organizers in front of and behind the screens, to our allies sponsoring the event-- Project NIA, Survived & Punished, Survived & Punished NY, Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, Southerners On New Ground (SONG), BYP 100 and the Red Nation.

Thank you to Haymarket Books for offering and holding down LiveStream support, Brandon Kazen-Maddox and Tristan Wright for their masterful ASL interpretation and assistance, and Denee Vadell for captioning. We are grateful to HEARD for reaching out to Tristee and Denee, and for covering the costs of their time and labor.

After the protests, rebellions and uprisings swept across the US in the aftermath of recent killings of Black people by police that sparked a range of calls and campaigns to address the violence and devastation of policing, we noticed that some of these calls furthering local abolitionist efforts to defund and disband entire police departments, and many proposals aim to re-form and legitimize policing.

We knew we had to act swiftly in creating a space for grounded strategy and analysis at this turning-point and historical juncture. Now is the time for prison industrial complex abolitionists to continue to focus on what it will take to diminish the political, economic and social power of policing.

Below we share some highlights from the event and a compiled list of resources for further study and use to strengthen our organizing and our movement. We look forward to continuing to build a self-determined, liberated world with you, free from policing, borders and caging.

In Struggle,
Critical Resistance

Event Highlights and Resources

As On the Road with Abolition panelist and Critical Resistance member Woods Ervin explained to us Friday, prison industrial complex abolition is a winning strategy. In a matter of hours, over 10,500 RSVPd on eventbrite, and over 8,500 tuned in live on Youtube. Over the weekend, the views have surged to over 28,000 as more curious and dedicated organizers have tuned in to watch. In just three days, we raised over $60,000 for Mutual Aid 4 Youth Project.

Our movement for abolition is growing. Fast.

Our brilliant panelists, Dean Spade of Big Door Brigade & No New Women’s Prison Campaign, Woods Ervin & Kamau Walton from Critical Resistance, K Agbebiyi from Survived and Punished NY and Mariame Kaba from Project NIA and Survived & Punished, helped us weigh how exactly to determine which to support and which to oppose in our organizing.

They clarified the importance of ensuring our efforts to eliminate policing also always strengthen and advance our movement to abolish the entire prison industrial complex (PIC). They demonstrated how to assess if a proposal or reform expands the reach of policing, or if it works to chip away and reduce the overall impact of policing, eventually eliminating the institution of policing altogether.

Their wise words and sage advice are still here for us to come back to, to re-engage with, to continue to study, share, refer other folks to, and build off of.

As Mariame schooled us: “In this tumultuous and creative moment, more than ever, we need clarity and we need to hold the line on PIC abolition.”

Re-watch the whole webinar here on Haymarket Book's YouTube Channel.

We encourage you to save this video link and continue to rewatch it and share it with your communities, networks, organizations, collectives and coalitions.

You can also find Mariame Kaba’s slides that were used to present the framing of the event and what abolition is as a politic and framework during the webinar here: https://bit.ly/abolishingppt

Quote from Woods Ervin, Critical Resistance: "Abolition isn't just a goal, but a politic, practice and framework for social, political and economic change.

And we encourage you to save and share the social media tiles we made images featuring quotes from our panelists, and to apply them in your work.

Photographs in each tile were taken by Brooke Anderson, a movement photographer in the Bay Area.

Quote from Mariame Kaba, Project NIA and Survived and Punished: "Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the prison industrial complex both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence and controlling millions of people."

Quote from Kamau Walton, Critical Resistance: "Police snatch people up and they take them to the court system. It's important to ground ourselves not just in what's being called for in the moment but in the long-term: "How are we making room for more and more concrete, abolitionist wins that chip away at policing, imprisonment, state-sanctioned surveillance, and at the courts that criminalize and cage our people."

Quote from Dean Space, Big Door Brigade and No New Women's Prison: "The Elites will offer elite solutions. Elite solutions are designed to immobilize us. They are designed as concessions to quiet us. But the reality is, the bolder we are, the more we get, the more we win. Elite solutions tell us that we should 'follow the rules and stay within the lines' but that's not actually how change happens."

Quote from K Agbebiyi, Survived and Punished: "We're not working to reduce police violence by 75%. We're working to reduce police violence by 100%, as well as the rest of the prison industrial complex."

Graphic illustration by the talented Elizabeth Hee (@lizar_tistry), mapping the webinar and key points from our panelists.

Compiled Resources for Abolishing Policing

As our dear friend, former member and co-founder Rachel Herzing, now executive director of Center for Political Education, constantly reminds us: “struggle and study are inextricably linked and feed off each other”; it is always the right time to study the history and analysis of struggles before us with the explicit purpose of strengthening our political organizing and movements, especially in moments of rebellion when the stakes are at their highest.

We compiled materials mentioned in the talk and the chat box for you to support political education and sharpen strategy development. You can find all of these recommended resources and more on Critical Resistance’s website here: http://criticalresistance.org/resources

Upcoming Events:

TODAY (6/16/2020): COMMUNITY, Not Cops: Abolitionist Organizing Against Police in Schools with CR’s K-12 Abolitionist Educators Network & Education for Liberation Network. Register here!

Toolkits, Organizing Tools & Political Education Resources for Fighting Policing and the Prison Industrial Complex:

#DefundPolice Toolkit (Released: 6/15/2020): https://bit.ly/InterruptingToolkit
Critical Resistance’s chart Reformist Reforms vs Abolitionist Reforms of Policing (view here)
8 to Abolition Framework: https://www.8toabolition.com
- the designers of this framework identified more anti-policing resources here
Critical Resistance’s Abolish Policing Workshop (view here)
Critical Resistance’s online timeline of Policing in the US (View here)
Fighting the Militarization of Policing & Emergency Training: Stop Urban Shield Coalition (view website here)
For Fighting Gang Injunctions & Gang Criminalization:
- Stop the Injunctions Coalition Demands (view here)
- Betraying the Model City: Stop the Injunctions Coalition Report for an example of integrating a people’s budgeting strategy into an anti-policing campaign (Read here)
- Other Resources for fighting gang injunctions and gang criminalization efforts (View here)

Connecting Policing to Imprisonment

CR’s Chart on Abolitionist Responses to Jail Expansion & Reform (Read here)
No New SF Jail Coalition’s resources on:
CA United for a Responsible Budget (CURB)’s Manual on How to Stop a Jail in Your Town

For Educators, Healthworkers, Emergency Service Providers, Social Workers, and More:

Grow Abolition On Your Campus (PDF): https://bit.ly/campusabolition
Oakland Power Projects: Anti-Policing Resources for Healthcare Workers (View website here)
Oakland Power Projects: Emergency Preparedness without Policing (View project here)
“Law Enforcement is a Public Health Issue” Policy Recommendations from the American Public Health Association. View website here.
- Organizer’s Pamphlet on the APHA policy (Read here).

For Addressing Interpersonal Conflict and Harm

Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators (Order from AK Press here)

Transform Harm: An online resource hub for ending violence. View website here.

Creative Interventions extensive Toolkit (over 500 pages!) of how to sStop interpersonal violence without relying on the prison industrial complex (including the use of policing, imprisonment, surveillance, criminalization or Child Protective Services). View complete toolkit here.

Listen to Stories about Community Responses to Harm and Interpersonal Violence with the StoryTelling & Organizing Project

Articles & Reports for Analysis & Study for Abolishing Policing:

Problems with Community Control of Police & Proposals for Alternatives (PDF): https://bit.ly/CRBProblems
Truthout Article on Abolitionist developments in Minneapolis: Minneapolis Organizers Are Already Building the Tools for Safety Without Police (Read here)
A Book Chapter on the fight to Stop Gang Injunctions in Oakland--
"Our Oakland, Our Solutions: Stop the Injunctions Coalition" (Read pdf of chapter here)
2009 Left Turn Article from BART to SWAT by former Critical Resistance members Rachel Herzing and Isaac Ontiveros on the Oscar Grant Movement and origins of today’s anti-policing movement (Read here)