Today is International Women’s Day. This March also marks the last month of PPF’s six-month deep focus on the call to defund the police (more about that commitment and what it means here).
In the past five months, we have committed to political education and taking action toward abolition through action circles, book clubs, virtual coffee hours, webinars, Abolitionist Advent and Lent, and Praxis Circles. The work to abolish the prison industrial complex, including policing, is not new; it has been led and stewarded by women for decades. The abolition movement has been and is being led primarily by queer Black women like Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, Andrea Ritchie, adrienne maree brown, and more. Black nonbinary people like Prentiss Hemphill are also important leaders in the movement.
If abolition feels challenging--and it should--it's because it is not easy! If it was easy, we would already have systems of true safety and accountability that don’t involve policing or incarceration. This International Women’s Day is an especially meaningful day to read and listen to some of these visionary women who are leading this movement:
This work goes beyond reading and listening, of course, and it goes beyond one day. This is lifetime work, and as a majority-white organization we seek to follow the lead of the people most impacted by the prison industrial complex (which includes policing) while doing our own work.
When PPF talks about abolition we are talking about a vision of a world without prisons or police where true safety means everyone’s needs are met and conflict is resolved in community. This vision requires that we move our resources and collective energies in order to invest in the flourishing of our communities. This will look different in different contexts.
How does this already look in your contexts? How can you honor the work of so many known and unknown women who practice the values of abolition--mutual aid, solidarity, true safety--today in your own community?
-- Rev. Emily Brewer
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