Virtual hang + discussion :: June 13th 2020 11am PT/2pm ET/8pm CT :: https://meet.jit.si/xyrden

The most immediate question today is how to prevent the further expansion of prison populations and how to bring as many imprisoned women and men as possible back into what prisoners call the “free world. How can we move to decriminalize drug use and the trade in sexual services? How can we take seriously strategies of restorative rather than elusively punitive justice? Effective alternatives involve both transformation of the techniques for addressing "crime" and of the social and economic conditions that track so many children from poor communities, and especially communities of color, into the juvenile system and then on to prison. The most difficult and urgent challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrain of justice, where the prison no longer serves as our major anchor.

Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?

Policing is a social relationship made up of a set of practices that are empowered by the state to enforce law and social control through the use of force. Reinforcing the oppressive social and economic relationships that have been central to the US throughout its history, the roots of policing in the United States have their origin in the capture of people escaping slavery, and the enforcement of Black Codes.

Similarly, police forces have been used to keep new immigrants “in line” and to prevent the poor and working classes from making demands. As social conditions change, how is policing used to target poor people, people of color, immigrants, and others who do not conform on the street or in their homes? (via Critical Resistance)

It’s important to note that this system is not “broken”, but operating exactly how it was designed.

Focusing on reforms like improved training doesn’t solve racially biased policing. That’s because of the nature of policing itself. The law, the police and mass incarceration are tools for maintaining a status quo of deep, violent, and pervasive inequality.

In this xyrden reading group we will dive into the police & prison abolition movement in order to better understand and articulate the implicit rules of the prison industrial complex in the US and elsewhere - and ultimately to imagine and support the building of more just realities with each other.

By no means are we prison or police abolition experts - the idea is to engage as many people as possible in this and learn from the texts together.

If you are not from the US and and want to explore these ideas with us, we welcome your input and participation. White supremacy and it’s systems are deeply embedded across the globe - the more we engage is dismantling them, the better!

Black lives matter. The issue of white supremacy effects not only all of us, but the full web of life.

Verso Books kindly made The End of Policing e-book free of charge for the week, we downloaded it! We'll read chapters 1 from both The End of Policing as well as Angela Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete? We also will read MPD150's short zine on [Building a police-free future.](https://www.mpd150.com/wp-content/themes/mpd150/assets/faq_zine.pdf](https://www.mpd150.com/wp-content/themes/mpd150/assets/faq_zine.pdf)