My project (work in progress) is three Equality Archive posts centered around Abolitionist Feminist. 

1. My theoretical concerns rest within a few intersecting frameworks, including but not limited to: abolition feminism, transformative/restroative justice, disruption of systems/cycles of violence. I have leaned deeply into the words of Angela Davis, especially in her research of police and prison abolition. Her book Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) has been a foundational resource in my own research. Additionally, texts such as Trying to Transform by Sara Ahmed (2017), We Do this ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (2021) by Mariame Kaba. These texts, among others, help me to understand a history of policing and prisons in more grounded statistical research while also laying the foundation for abstract and theoretical abolition-feminist work. I am embracing my existence that lives between and within studying abolition in academics and practicing it as a lifestyle outside of the institution. This navigation is essential in my progress moving forward. 

2. In my undergraduate studies, I was forced to rekon with my own social location in ways I never had to think about before- which says a lot about who I was and who I am now. During this time, I began making more sense of systems that are designed to actively benefit people like me (i.e.white, middle class, cis, ablebodied, etc. etc.), while simultaneously harming people who aren’t like me. I have been called to investigate more of my relationship to police and prison as systems that have tremendously harmful effects on our communities. My interest in unpacking systems of power has helped to strengthen my work in academia but also strengthen my work as an abolitionist-feminist. My experience in graduate school, so far, has asked me to be certain of more things than I actually am; meaning that writing a thesis and definitively deciding on a research question is something that I simply do not feel ready to commit to at this point in my education. Some days I wonder if I shouldn’t have gone to grad school so soon after finishing undergrad. Despite my uncertainty, I am actively trying to navigate how I can explore different areas of inquiry which I am interested in and successfully complete my higher degree. For me, this can and does mean that I work on projects that propel my interest in abolition feminism forward but it is not the only project I am concerning myself with. My larger project for this class does advance work in abolition but it does not necessarily propel some even larger project that will eventually turn into a thesis or dissertation. Rather, it is a larger project for me, for my feminism, for my activism, for my knowledge. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am my larger project. 

3. This project matters to me because the idea that police and prisons make our communities safer is a myth and it continues to perpetuate a fictitious narrative built on a history of capitalism and white supremacy. I also suggest that this matters because a future in abolition requires community members to build the world they want to live in, absent of policing and carceral punishment. This work asks us to educate ourselves on the foundational elements of abolition, rooted in activism, research and reality. The idea of abolition is pinned as a radical and idealist perception of what our world could look like, but I argue that radicalism is used as a weapon to reinforce the very structures that allow for police and prisons to be sustained. Sometimes when I think or write emotionally/politically charged things like this I worry that I am on my own soap box too much. But I think this is the voice in my head that has programmed me to not challenge what I have always been taught and so I remind myself that if not for the soap box, we would not be here. 

4. My research question is: (loosely) How can we, in all our varying social locations, better imagine a world free of police and prisons, and more actively embrace abolitionist practices into our feminism and communities?