The call to defund the police is, I think, an abolitionist demand, but it reflects only
one aspect of the process represented by the demand.
Defunding the police is not simply about withdrawing funding for law enforcement and doing nothing else.
And it appears as if this is the rather superficial understanding that has caused Biden to move
in the direction he’s moving in.
It’s about shifting public funds to new services and new institutions — mental health
counselors, who can respond to people who are in crisis without arms.
It’s about shifting funding to education, to housing, to recreation.
All of these things help to create security and safety.
It’s about learning that safety, safeguarded by violence, is not really safety.
And I would say that abolition is not primarily a negative strategy.
It’s not primarily about dismantling, getting rid of, but it’s about reenvisioning.
It’s about building anew.
And I would argue that abolition is a feminist strategy.
And one sees in these abolitionist demands that are emerging the pivotal influence of
feminist theories and practices.
Explain that further.
Well, I want us to see feminism not only as addressing issues of gender, but rather as
a methodological approach of understanding the intersectionality of struggles and issues.
Abolition feminism counters carceral feminism, which has unfortunately assumed that issues
such as violence against women can be effectively addressed by using police force, by using
imprisonment as a solution.
And of course we know that Joseph Biden, in 1994, who claims that the Violence Against
Women Act was such an important moment in his career — the Violence Against Women
Act was couched within the 1994 Crime Act, the Clinton Crime Act.
And what we’re calling for is a process of decriminalization, not — recognizing
that threats to safety, threats to security, come not primarily from what is defined as
crime, but rather from the failure of institutions in our country to address issues of health,
issues of violence, education, etc.
So, abolition is really about rethinking the kind of future we want, the social future,
the economic future, the political future.
It’s about revolution, I would argue.
You write in Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, “Neoliberal ideology drives us to focus
on individuals, ourselves, individual victims, individual perpetrators.
But how is it possible to solve the massive problem of racist state violence by calling
upon individual police officers to bear the burden of that history and to assume that
by prosecuting them, by exacting our revenge on them,
we would have somehow made progress in eradicating racism?”
So, explain what exactly you’re demanding.
Well, neoliberal logic assumes that the fundamental unit of society is the individual, and I would
say the abstract individual.
According to that logic, Black people can combat racism by pulling themselves up by
their own individual bootstraps.
That logic recognizes — or fails, rather, to recognize that there are institutional
barriers that cannot be brought down by individual determination.
If a Black person is materially unable to attend the university, the solution is not
affirmative action, they argue, but rather the person simply needs to work harder, get
good grades and do what is necessary in order to acquire the funds to pay for tuition.
Neoliberal logic deters us from thinking about the simpler solution, which is free education.
I’m thinking about the fact that we have been aware of the need for these institutional
strategies at least since 1935 — but of course before, but I’m choosing 1935 because
that was the year when W.E.B. Du Bois published
his germinal Black Reconstruction in America.
And the question was not what should individual Black people do, but rather how to reorganize
and restructure post-slavery society in order to guarantee the incorporation of those who
had been formerly enslaved.
The society could not remain the same — or should not have remained the same.
Neoliberalism resists change at the individual level.
It asks the individual to adapt to conditions of capitalism, to conditions of racism.