I want to begin by suggesting that whoever you are, wherever you are, whether you are a student, an academic, whether you are a worker, a person involved in your church, whether you are an artist…there are always ways to gear your work towards progressive, radical transformation.
~Angela Davis – The Prison Industrial Complex (1999)
I’ve been reading, curating and sharing resources about mass incarceration. I plan to do some writing about it as a way to work through what I’m learning. To think through barriers and imagine solutions.
In so doing, I lend my voice to the modern abolitionists: freedom fighters speaking and teaching about mass incarceration and its myriad, interconnected issues. At one point I curated a list of digital resources and my occasional musings, on my Tumblr here. As I think through things more deeply, or at least more fully, I plan to share here.
I am tempted to disparage my own efforts. They seem meaningless in the face of such a massive system. What, really, can sprinkling ideas through social media accomplish? What, really, might a few tentative words contribute?
But on the other hand, you have to start somewhere, yes? And in a silent room, even a whisper can garner attention, to say nothing of a full-throated response. So I hereby take my voice off mute, as I gear my work toward progressive, radical transformation.
Said June Jordan in Some of Us Did Not Die, “we have choices, and capitulation is only one of them.” Speaking up, speaking back, is another.