Abolitionist(s) Imagination(s): The NPIC and Its Carceral Imaginings
“So much of the work of oppression is policing the imagination.” — Saidiya Hartman
I came across this quote via twitter summer 2020. I screenshot and archived this tweet. These words and my reflection of them deeply moved me.
I assume, in general, when this tweet (which began circulating amongst organizers and activist via social media) is read and reflected upon, the perpetrator often thought of who does the work of policing the imagination are institutions directly tied to white supremacy such as the police state, or carceral educational institutions, or maybe western film and media. However, when I reflect on the speculation that oppression involves policing the imagination, the two most prominent institutions that house organizers, scholars, and activists come to mind. These institutions are Academia and non-profits that serve as containers for social movements and social change.
I want to be clear here about the phrase “contain” that I use when describing the presence of non-profit movement organizations. Non-profits should not be containers for any radical movement. Non-profits should serve to be an intermediary between stolen and commodified resources and communities that so desperately need them. That’s it.
Non-profits are not the movements themselves. The people are. Non-profit movement organizations should continuously answer to the people; specifically the most marginalized. Instead, they usually answer to a board of current/post-academic “scholar-activists” who are deemed as “experts” of the people…academics and career activists who have (intentionally & unintentionally) built an allegiance with the state through their desire for upward mobility and building careers out of the movement work they are often tasked to oversee and/or do.
Non-profit movement organizations often become containers for carceral internal practices.
These carceral practices often result in organizational harm &/or abuse. The unspoken harm and abuse taking place in non-profit movement work include the practice of a carceral politic called desirability. From colorism, ageism, fatphobia, featurism, transmysogynoir, and classism; desirability politics have shaped and formed the very structure of organizations that proclaim to be rooted in abolitionism and/or anti-carceral work.
These organizations ask the communities they’ve monopolized on to dream of a new world; a new way of being and belonging. They ask us to utilize our imaginations to see beyond a world of capitalism, carcerality, and prisons. Yet, they do not directly engage with and/or confront the very foundational structures of carcerality; which are rooted in desirability politics. They do not once consider these “-isms” as very stable foundations of carcerality. Non-profit movement organizations often become complicit in the policing of imaginations through their carceral desirable practices.
From the centering of non-black and/or lighter skinned, thin bodied, white-passing, cis, abled, and/or middle upper class folks; these organizations serve to limit abolitionist imaginings; thus limiting abolitionist praxes.
What I’ve personally experienced in my intimate involvement in non-profit movement work is the counter-insurgent practice of silencing darker-skinned, fat, disabled, and/or lower-class/poor individuals who confront the carceral practices of desirability politics. It is no secret that disabled, poor, and/or darker-skinned folks, (especially marginalized genders) experience the brunt of the criminal justice system in more extreme manners from longer sentencing periods to higher cash bails. Yet many abolitionist spaces i’ve been involved in completely ignore colorism as a very violent and carceral practice and choose to instead turn their cheek the other way.
What I’ve also personally experienced in my intimate involvement in non-profit movement work is the centering of counter-insurgent ideologies that are backed by academic institutions and/or famed activists who have created a career out of their work; these people and their (usually radlib) ideologies are not to be questioned. Nothing internally carceral is to be questioned especially if it costs a board member their position, if it costs a non-profit their funding and reputation, or if it is seemingly “too radical” to place in praxis due to nonprofits intimate relationships with academia and/or the state.
It is now important, more than ever, to distinguish between, (for lack of a less academic term) “schools” of Abolitionism.
Due to counter-insurgent practices from non-profit movement spaces and their co-optation of radical ideologies; it is time for us to find new language. Language is one of the many important cultural tools that we have to be able to imagine how we want to be free. Neoliberalism knows this and that’s why its goal for the past few decades has been to commodify and flatten the differentiation of the language we use to describe our experience and our desire to abolish systems that result in these experiences. It has cunningly used non-profits and career activists to support this mission.
Until a more radical language is formed around the way we seek to abolish this world and build new ones, I’ve moved from calling it Abolitionism to Abolitionism(s). The many imagined ideologies of how to abolish systems that exist to keep us imprisoned in various ways exist under an umbrella I refer to as “Abolitionism(s)”.
Some Abolitionism(s) cannot be divorced from liberalism and the state.
These abolitionisms usually support the mission of defunding carceral institutions and stop there. Some of these abolitionism(s) do not support fatphobia, transmysogynoir, colorism, featurism, and classism as legitimate forms of violence that have the ability to extend beyond emotional and psychological harm into physical and somatic harm. Yet, some of the schools of abolitionisms I support are readily invested in confronting desirability politics and have sought out the victims of these experiences as the true experts AND leaders of their movements.
It is in this school of aboilitionisms where I’ve found the ability to resist the policing of my imagination by non-profit movement orgs. Yes, I still do work for a non-profit movement org, I am indeed in academia. I believe that I’ve had no true sense of choice. Carcerality and capitalism is great at creating an illusion of choice, but here is where I find myself…trapped between the two and unable to imagine where to go from here. However, what I am able to imagine in this season is a future outside of the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC) that prioritizes underground resistance and employs those who will continuously challenge the NPIC’s role in counter-insurgent efforts and the monopolization of social movement/change and imaginations.
What has become extremely clear to me is that I’ve somewhat become “blackballed” in movement spaces due to my consistent desire to challenge the way neoliberalism has snuck into movements to manage dissent and the way that prominent activists have let it, often disposing of those who rebel against internal carceral practices and those most affected by these practices.
What is left is to strategize a principled way to move forward. A comrade once said to me and a group of attendees at a conference,
“when you strike power…power strikes back”,
and nothing can be more true in my opposition to the NPIC.
I know that the way I move naturally upsets those who wish to move a mere five steps beyond the carceral status quo and call themselves abolitionists, but what I possess is a deep sense of principled practice and struggle. Because the struggle against the state is a sacred one, therefore my practice of this struggle must be; and if its not, I expect to be called-in/out and held accountable.
And yes…..I do throw sacred & principled hands for the struggle.
