As we’ve moved from Black History Month through Women’s History Month, marking the later with International Women’s Day in the month’s beginning and ending it with the upcoming International Day of Trans Visibility, we’re taking a moment to ground ourselves in and uplift the radical and life-giving tradition of abolition as a feminist politic.
Prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition is a part of a legacy rooted in the leadership, vision, labor, and radical care of women of color, queer and trans feminists, and everyday grassroots organizers across generations and geographies—people who have long fought at the frontlines of movements for freedom, safety, and dignity. Abolition and feminism have never been separate from the fight for collective liberation—abolitionist feminism is the fight. From Harriet Tubman to Ida B Wells, from the Combahee River Collective to Audre Lorde, Angela Y Davis, Assata Shakur, from Grace Lee Boggs to Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major, and countless everyday organizers in our communities, abolitionist feminists have taught us that none of our struggles are separate. At the intersections of state violence, racial capitalism, and gender oppression, feminist freedom fighters teach us that the prison industrial complex (PIC) doesn’t only punish individuals—it upholds white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and queer-and-transphobia. It disappears Black, Indigenous, migrant, queer, and trans people—especially Black trans women—and punishes survivors, sex workers, educators, and caregivers while denying communities the resources we need to thrive.
As part of a feminist tradition, PIC abolitionists—especially Black feminist abolitionists—have shown us that dismantling systems of policing, imprisonment, and surveillance must go hand in hand with building a world grounded in care, safety, and interdependence. There is no true liberation without confronting the intertwined forces of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism. Abolition is not only about tearing down prisons and dismantling policing, but about building the conditions where no one is disposable, and where safety, healing, dignity, housing, food, education, care, and joy are accessible and possible for everyone.
Right now, this vision is more urgent than ever.
Across the US and around the world, we’re living through a dangerous wave of escalating attacks on bodily autonomy, reproductive freedom, transgender and queer lives, and Black communities—all inside and outside of prisons—from abortion bans and anti-trans laws, to the criminalization of gender-affirming care, to the increased policing, imprisonment, surveillance that subjects masses of people to racist, gender-based, and state-sanctioned violence under the guise of “public safety”. Inside prisons, transgender people—especially Black and Indigenous trans women who are already targeted, surveilled, and imprisoned at alarming rates—are facing intensified daily violence, medical neglect, silencing, and erasure. Outside, communities are being targeted and surveilled for not just insisting society must change but for merely existing.
Our feminist origins and commitment as abolitionists remind us that these attacks are not separate—they are connected. They are part of a larger strategy of white supremacy, patriarchy, and control all to secure fascism’s hold on society—and they require bold, coordinated resistance. As a feminist organizing strategy, PIC abolition gives us that path. It reminds us that the fight for reproductive justice is the fight for PIC abolition. That defending trans lives is fighting against racism, white supremacy, and fascism. That building safety means investing in people, not punishment. That’s why abolition must be feminist, and feminism must be abolitionist.
Women’s History Month is a time to honor the radical legacy of those who fought before us— not for inclusion, but for transformation, revolution, and liberation—and to carry that work forward. International Women’s Day reminds us that these struggles were born from socialist and working-class, anti-colonial global movements for self-determination, while International Day of Trans Visibility calls us to protect, uplift, and cultivate the leadership of trans people who are not only surviving but creating new possibilities for us all.
This Women’s History Month—and every month—we at Critical Resistance commit to honoring and standing with the Black, Brown, queer, trans, and working-class feminist freedom fighters who’ve shown us the way in standing with communities under attack and who are carrying that work forward now—in the streets, in prisons and detention centers, in clinics, in classrooms, and in our communities. Their vision is not only our history—it’s our future. We affirm that there is no movement work—there is no liberation—without the leadership of women of color and queer and trans people. We recommit to building a world where no one is criminalized for who they are or what they need, and where care, not cages, defines how we respond to conflict and harm: a world where we can all live and thrive.
This is our lineage. This is our commitment. This is the work of abolition, and it is the work of our time.
For a world without walls,
-Critical Resistance