We are pleased to announce that Issue 32 of The Abolitionist is finally being mailed out to our readers right now!
Help us send it free to over 7,000 imprisoned people across the country: Subscribe today or contact us for an organizational subscription!
On the theme of “Decolonization and Abolition,” this powerful issue pulls back the curtain on the essential relationship between global, intersecting decolonial struggles, and the work to resist the insidious violence of the prison industrial complex. As stated in the “Letter from the Editors,” from Palestine to Puerto Rico to First Nations resistance:
“…abolition and decolonization are a necessary ongoing kinship to uplift all bodies harmed by colonialism, as mechanisms of erasure, disappearance, and confinement work to uphold the prison industrial complex and uphold the same actors that benefit from the first colonial settlements centuries ago.”
Reflections on the Fight Toxic Prisons convergence with CR’s Jamani Montague unpacks the mutually destructive impacts of the hybrid degradation of earth and caging of Black and Indigenous bodies. The critical insights of contributors like anti-imperialist scholar-activists Harsha Walia and Steven Salaita, and Nate Tan of Asian Prisoner Support Committee, detail the complexities and abolitionist possibilities of combating evolving neoliberal, imperialist exploitation and rhetoric.
Finally, we are excited to again offer updates on political prisoners and statements from Critical Resistance chapters across the country on current local and regional work
As a sneak preview to the issue, we’re sharing this interview conducted by The Abolitionist with Marisol LeBrón on her recently published book Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2019). LeBron discusses the normalization of “mano dura” police power in Puerto Rico and the social hierarchies and colonial relationship with the US that Puerto Rico is pushed to replicate to maintain an illusion of social control. Click the link to read the full interview and subscribe today to continue making The Abolitionist possible!