How should movements seeking to free political prisoners relate to the prison abolition movement?
As a member of Critical Resistance, prison abolition is key for me. Once people become aware of the prison industrial complex, we begin to see how the institution and the thinking behind it play a key part in our oppression. Once again, we can see how the prison came about as an institution of racism and class oppression, especially in the United States. If people are talking about liberation in the United States, whether it’s Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Asians, or even poor whites or working class people, they’re going to come up against the police and the prison system whenever they dare to challenge the system. Prison abolition becomes key because it helps to show that a society without oppression must be a society free of prisons. And a society without prisons has to be a society without the thinking that leads to prisons in the first place. But we need to get better at making the connection between prison abolition and political prisoners. Many folks working on poli
