MediaJustice Fellow James Kilgore, who helps lead our work challenging e-carceration (#NoDigitalPrisons), co-authored a stirring piece at The Marshall Project on why we desperately need to fight for a world without prisons:
Ultimately, abolition is a practical program of change rooted in how people sustain and improve their lives, cobbling together insights and strategies from disparate, connected struggles. We know we won’t bulldoze prisons and jails tomorrow, but as long as they continue to be advanced as the solution, all of the inequalities displaced to crime and punishment will persist. We’re in a long game.
RUTH WILSON GILMORE AND JAMES KILGORE
Authors of reforms claim expertise about what “the public” will accept, as if it were a single entity that’s already made its mind about everything. But people frequently broaden their commitments because they learn about, and link to, previously unfamiliar struggles. These are not the public experts invoke but a public resolved to pursue policies and plans to realize their goals.
