I’m realizing something.
People that want the world to be a better place, concede that it has to happen in steps because they think they have to convince other people of it.
And sure, some people need new education and to have their eyes opened up.
But you know who sets the pace for things happening in slow steps?
People who are giving you “change takes time” as a platitude, who actually think the world operates fine as it is —
completely aware that it is needlessly cruel and unfair.
They hope the cold syrup pace will make you give up, so they can keep benefiting from the suffering.
imagine if you said “abolish slavery” a bunch of elites were trotted out to say “don’t worry, they don’t actually mean *abolishing* slavery—just REIMAGINING slavery!” but I suppose that’s what they did to create our prison system
— shereen (@shereeny) June 8, 2020
Six years ago,
I went to a college that taught me about prison abolition when it was an insane conspiracy theory about the material conditions that impact people’s lives and limit their abilities to excel —
And then the moment I got a job at the school they handed me a copy of The Oz Principle and were, like,
“good luck, we’re about to fuck you so hard and then blame you for not excelling immediately in progressively more impossible circumstances!”
I don’t know how to say this, but as someone who has spent time in a psychiatric ward, fellow white people suggesting that “mental health professionals” always respond to mental health crises in compassionate ways is … a lot. People within the system brutalize, coerce & oppress
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) June 6, 2020
I don’t fault anyone. There are no good answers to who should respond to a wellness check, and high on the list of who absolutely shouldn’t is the cops. I just don’t think the doctors/nurses/social workers within the system are what you think. I could tell stories.
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) June 6, 2020
But of course the problem is that once you are in the system as a patient, you become an unreliable narrator. The only way out is compliance. Otherwise there is so much harm, disempowerment and dehumanization that can be done to you “for your own good.”
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) June 6, 2020
Anyway. I’ve been very fortunate to encounter some great people within the mental health system. But I’ve also encountered some people who are on truly terrifying power trips. And I’ve barely seen the tip of the iceberg, because I’m white, middle class and can pass as sane
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) June 6, 2020
I try not to have shame when I talk about this because everyone is like “mental health is health, end the stigma!!!” but they’re talking about the relatable kind of mental illness. They don’t want to hear from the bad crazies who end up on locked wards or worse.
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) June 6, 2020
And mental health care conversations are challenging because lots of people do have lived experience but there’s such a vast gulf between “went to my doctor for anxiety and got a prescription for Zoloft” and “watched my psych ward roommate get punched and put into restraints”
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) June 6, 2020
This is why ABOLITION is important.
Abolition is not about ending cops, it’s about ultimately ending the prison model.
We should not be taking freedom away from survival criminals, sex workers, the mentally ill, addicts, etc. because we’re afraid of the one in every thousand serial killer.
Pivoting away from punishment and containment, pivoting away from paternalistic control, pivoting towards community care, prevention of societal woes by addressing individual needs, radical forgiveness.
Yes, you might still have SOME RARE people who have to be separated from society. But assuming ‘criminals’ (which is a class of people that expands beyond just law breaking, don’t even start me on how social groups overlap and form each other) are permanently marred by mistakes or illness, that they can’t redeem or recover truly, is a model that only seems to benefit people hungry for power over those types of people.
Like seriously,
let me for arguments sake accept the most liberal definition of defunding police, where we don’t eliminate police, but we shrink them down dramatically and focus on other, mostly social worker-based solutions for crime.
What impact exactly do you think that’s going to have on arrests, on head counts of prisons and jails, on head counts of people in the legal system?
I don’t think any of us are envisioning a solution where EMTs, mental health workers, social workers, etc. get arresting privileges. Are we? Is that really the outcome any of us want?
We know on some level that the prison industrial complex is completely out of fucking hand.
We know on some level that its implementation is biased and cruel.
If we aren’t sitting and considering the outcomes we want, if we aren’t going to an uncomfortable and radical place to seek it, and if we aren’t sitting and listening to the outcomes black people want, we aren’t going to commit a revolution. We’re going to commit a small redistribution of power that ultimately replicates what is disgusting and outrageous about the system already at play.
We will leave another generation to clean up what we were supposed to clean up and didn’t because we weren’t brave enough to have vision for a new world.
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Note to self: finish in the morning:
—melony ppenosyne
Flommist Melony Ppenosyne is a writer and weird artist type. In the last year alone, she’s traveled to Virginia as a competing poet, co-written a play on mental illness that is presently being produced, and crafted a published essay checking the privilege and scope of art galleries. Copyright © 2020 Melony Ppenosyne.
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