Op-Ed: There Is No Queer Liberation Without Prison Abolition

This Juneteenth, queer and trans people must recognize that the prison industrial complex is a descendant of slavery, and that we must abolish it to be free.
Harriet Tubman Angela Davis Andrea Jenkins
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Juneteenth commemorates the day when, 155 years ago today, a Union general arrived in Galveston, Texas, almost two years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, with the news that enslaved Black people had been granted their long overdue “freedom.” What is supposed to be a celebration of the end of an economic and social system that commodified the lives of enslaved Black people should remind us that slavery was never abolished, but rather reformed and reorganized. First through the convict leasing system, then the deepening of racist policing through Nixon’s “Law and Order” campaign, then Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill, which catalyzed the boom in prison populations, the private prison industry, and the prison industrial complex (PIC) as we know it, slavery — and not simply its component parts — lives on into the present day. So does abolition.

Where the slavery abolition movement once asked Americans to value the sanctity of human life regardless of race, today’s police and PIC abolitionists ask us to continue the work of securing that sanctity. Now we are fighting for a complete and thorough abolition of the inherently anti-Black institutions of policing and the PIC. Once again we are challenging ourselves and each other to craft a world where we are not only free to live as we please, but also have the resources and support systems for those lives to be safe and comfortable.

From the 1969 Stonewall Uprising to the thousands of queer and trans people of color who marched to New York City’s Women’s House of Detention the following year, demanding that the state “Free our sisters! Free ourselves!”, the movement for queer and trans liberation has always had abolition at its core. As Americans, we are told by the media and our elected officials that police and prisons are necessary to deter crimes and maintain order, but as prison populations swell to unprecedented numbers and police violence continues to wreak havoc on our communities, we must consider whether the current system is actually serving us.

Through the convict leasing system, then the deepening of racist policing through Nixon’s “Law and Order” campaign, then Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill, which catalyzed the boom in prison populations, the private prison industry, and PIC as we know it, slavery — and not simply its component parts — lives on into the present day.

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Prisons breed violence and swallow those capitalism deems undesirable; police enforce and perpetuate that violence. By definition, queerness exists outside the confines of what is deemed acceptable, so it comes as no surprise that 48% of LGBTQ+ victims of violence report police misconduct. Nearly one in two Black trans people have been to prison, often as punishment for crimes of survival. Queer people are also at greater risk of experiencing homelessness, extreme poverty, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and all of the violent conditions that lead to encounters with police and the PIC. Abolition encourages us to face the lies we have been told about what justice looks like and take active steps towards unlearning and rebuilding. In addition to the removal of the violent systems that seek to oppress us, abolition also requires an active commitment to building support systems that actually make our Black, queer communities safer. If we are to continue living in a world that seeks to disappear us through prison and police violence, abolition must be central to any movement for queer liberation.

Queerness is both a criticism of and collective movement against the status quo. It challenges cisgender identity and heterosexuality as the epitome of validity by offering a more expansive basis for humanhood. As celebrated abolitionist Dr. Angela Davis recently noted, “We support the trans community precisely because the community has taught us how to challenge that which is totally accepted as normal. If it is possible to challenge the gender binary, then we can certainly effectively resist prisons and police.” If we can recognize that queerness requires imagining a world that has never existed — while actively unlearning the toxic socializations of this world — it is time for us as queer people to join the long and challenging journey toward abolition.

As queer people, we understand the ways that gender and heterosexuality imprison us. We recognize how our bodies and expressions are policed at work, at school, and by our loved ones. We are intimately aware of the small revolutions that happen every time we choose to love and gather and exist in non-normative ways. The radical potential of queerness is the choice to focus our collective efforts into envisioning more restorative possibilities. As Mariame Kaba explains in her New York Times op-ed, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police,” “People who want to abolish prisons and police have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation.” Abolition is queer in that it is a conscious and consistent act, rather than a destination we arrive upon.

Abolition and queerness are intrinsically linked in their exploration and dismissal of the impossible. Queer people: It is time we once again uproot the foundations of normalcy and be fluid and dynamic as we plunge into a future where harm is not perpetuated but instead transformed. There is no queer and trans liberation without the abolition of police and the prison industrial complex.


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