We’ve fought for the demand: Cut at least $1 billion from the bloated NYPD budget and reinvest this money into programs and services that provide necessary resources to Black, brown, and low-income communities. As we wait to see how City Council votes on the budget today, it is important to remember that, no matter the outcome, the work does not stop here.
The call to defund the NYPD is one piece of the larger movement aimed at shifting the cultural framework from “crime and punishment” to “harm and repair.” In this new framework, we can create a world without police or prisons. And so we might ask, without the prison industrial complex (PIC), how can we actually address harm?
This question has bridged movements fighting state and interpersonal violence, and particularly violence toward women of color. Scholar and organizer Ruth Wilson Gilmore summarizes the revolutionary breadth of this work: “Abolition is a movement to end systemic violence, including the interpersonal vulnerabilities and displacements that keep the system going. In other words, the goal is to change how we interact with each other and the planet by putting people before profits, welfare before warfare, and life over death.”
From here we may wonder how we will make these changes. What will we transform?
Transformative justice, a political framework and approach for responding to violence, harm and abuse, emphasizes community accountability: non-state responses and interventions to address the conditions that give rise to violence within a particular community. This means not only fostering healing for survivors of violence and abuse, but also developing processes enabling accountability and transformation for those who cause harm. It is the work of cultivating strong and supportive interpersonal relationships and, ultimately, safety within community—countering violence with nurturance and support.
While learning from and engaging in practices developed by BIPOC organizers, queer and trans people, survivors of gender-based violence, people with disabilities, sex workers, and formerly incarcerated people, we as white people at the same time need to reckon with our own role in the prison industrial complex (PIC).
How have we internalized the narratives of punishment and carceral “justice”? How are we entangled in the interests of the prison industrial complex? And what actions are we taking to cut those ties and transform ourselves and our society?
Let’s continue to deepen our understanding of safety and accountability by listening, learning, and investigating together. We’ll be digging into this at our July chapter meeting this Thursday - we hope to see you there! See below for more about that, as well as other ways to plug in.
In solidarity,
SURJ NYC