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S1E8: Abolition & the (Radical) Imagination Party…
6 Plays1 day ago
In the season 1 finale of Books, BBQ & Black History, we will discuss the meaning of abolition, my abolitionist praxis and journey, why you need to have a more radical imagination than your oppressors.
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Background
00:00:01
Books, BBQ & Black History
All right, y'all, we are back for another episode of Books, Barbecue, and Black History. This is episode eight, also the finale episode for season one.
00:00:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
I'm your host, Toya. I'm a North Carolina-based social scientist, educator, and organizer with an abolitionist practices, which I'll get into in a few moments.
Content Warnings and Episode Focus
00:00:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
I do want to give a trigger warning for this episode because it will contain references to and discussions of white supremacist violence in a variety of ways. That can include abuse, sexual assault, police brutality, those sorts of things. So please be sure to take care of your mental health as you are listening to this episode.
00:00:43
Books, BBQ & Black History
So, the title of this episode is Abolition and the Radical Imagination Party. So, we are going to be talking about abolition in this episode today. And specifically, we're going to be talking about what abolition is.
Defining Abolition and Reform
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Books, BBQ & Black History
going to talk a little bit about my journey to abolition and what radicalized me.
00:01:04
Books, BBQ & Black History
And continues to radicalize me, if I'm being honest. I'm going to talk about what is an abolitionist praxis, because I know I keep saying I have an abolitionist praxis, so I'm going to kind of break down what that means today.
00:01:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
I'm going to talk a little bit about the impact of community organizing has had on me that I've done, that I have seen done, and I'm going to talk a little bit about why Black folks should care about abolition.
00:01:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
But of course, you know, i have to start this off with my book excerpt of the day. So I'm going to read you excerpt from this book and as usual We'll talk more about it once we get to the end of the episode about why I chose it.
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Books, BBQ & Black History
So here goes. We cannot forget our North Star. As we let go of what is comfortable and familiar to be present in the space between what is crumbling and what is being birthed,
00:01:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
We must call forth our inherent word to demand what our peoples actually need, even as we make strategic decisions at times rooted in incremental reforms or harm reduction. We must take full ownership and responsibility for our futures. It has always been up to us to create the world we long for and know it's possible.
00:02:12
Books, BBQ & Black History
Our ancestors have been fighting for abolition since the founding of this country. It is our duty to honor this lineage and get clear about our specific contribution to this fight. Cat Brooks calls on us to consider how we hold the long-term work of organizing between the flashpoints of protest and mobilization, the work in between.
00:02:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
We can anticipate passing these practices down to the next generation and it is part of the actual leadership development and not just an afterthought. We need to anticipate that there will be an ebb, but that doesn't mean that we stop.
00:02:42
Books, BBQ & Black History
The ebbs don't mean we stop working. That's actually when we work the hardest because the work that happens inside of the ebbs are what makes the flows possible. This moment requires us to consider the relationship between risk and safety for our dignity and humanity.
00:02:56
Books, BBQ & Black History
What stability or security are we willing to forego in order to gain collective liberation. This asks us to practice with more rigor and discipline. it asks us to consider the It asks us to study the history of movements so we are informed about abolitionist work. It requires us to simultaneously hold the past and present horrors of the state along with the sacrifices of those who came before us with all the radical possibilities that we can build the liberated systems of care we need.
00:03:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
All right, so I am going to come back to that a little bit later and explain like why we're talking about this and what book it comes from. But the first thing I want to start with, of course, is kind of grounding the conversation and understanding what we're actually talking about. So I want to first talk about what abolition actually is so Abolition as defined, well, so maybe we back it up.
00:03:50
Books, BBQ & Black History
So when we're talking specifically about abolition, when I'm using the term abolition, I'm specifically talking about the abolition of the prison industrial complex, the criminal justice system. And the prison industrial complex is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of the government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems.
00:04:15
Books, BBQ & Black History
a lot of times won before i get into abolition a little bit more a lot of times people confuse abolition and reform don't even say one they confuse them but they're just two different things so reform within the criminal justice system and criminal justice system is talking about you know the lawyers the judges the police the prosecutors basically everyone who makes up you know, pretty much that entire system. And it is very much an inequitable system. I'm actually going to do another episode, you know, the next season, but I'm actually going to another episode where i break down like the criminal justice system and a little bit more about criminology. But to not get too deep into that for this, when we're talking about reform, reform is basically talking about when you take a system, you don't really change the system, but you make some incremental sorts of things to kind of adjust but the system essentially does what it you know continues to do and example of reform would be like the police officers getting body cameras and de-escalation i know y'all can't see me but doing quotes but de-escalation training to address police brutality which isn't really the problem but you know we'll get into that with abolition But those will be examples of reforms because they are changes in the system. But the harm of that system essentially remains. Body cameras have not stopped. Like police brutality, de-escalation.
00:05:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
I've seen serial killers get walked out with like food and food. babies, black babies be shot. So it's not really a conversation about like de-escalation when we're talking about reform. Another example of reform and kind of the impact of that was I was thinking about body cameras. I'm not sure how many people in North Carolina remember. I know y'all remember Pat McCrory or I hope y'all remember him. But yeah, he signed and Pat McCrory is the former governor of of North Carolina. But in 2016, he signed HB 972. which is a bill that allows law enforcement agencies to keep officer-worn body camera footage from the public unless ordered to release the footage by court. So again, I'm still talking about reform. So even though we have body cameras as an example of reform,
00:06:38
Books, BBQ & Black History
there is a law in place you know in North Carolina that you actually can't see that body camera footage. So even though they're saying like, oh, you know we're we're recording these things you know for... you know, your protection, but we can't see it. And, you know, we ain't even getting to when we do see the body camera footage and what actually happens a little bit later. So anyway, that's kind of this conversation about reform, like having the body cameras has done nothing, literally nothing to stop, you know, police brutality from like happening. And so again, it was an incremental change in the system, but the harm of police brutality still remains.
00:07:15
Books, BBQ & Black History
So again, kind of going back to abolition, the difference between abolition and reform is that abolition of the prison industrial complex, and which includes the criminal justice system, is pretty much a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance, and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.
00:07:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
And even though I'm talking about it in the sense of you know prison right now, we'll talk a little bit more, but like abolition was actually born out of like the abolishment of slavery. So abolition actually begins with slavery. So it's also a very, very Black political ideology to hold, which is something I really love. Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and it is a long-term goal.
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Books, BBQ & Black History
And so... I'm very much a like, and actually this goes kind of to the next section of like, what
Personal Journey to Abolition
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Books, BBQ & Black History
radicalized me? why Why do I consider myself abolitionist? And like, what got me to that point? So, you know, just explaining to you what I just said about like the body cameras being there to like protect people from police brutality while also telling you about how, well, actually, you know, North Carolina has this law that says, even though we have body cameras, we don't have to show you that footage.
00:08:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
I think it's like actually a few things you got to go through to actually make that happen. And so those sorts of contradictions for me were kind of like in my face and then just recognizing, you know, through my studies as a criminologist, like, wow, people who are like rich, they really, i feel like one of the things I was told was that that just always stuck with me is that if the penalty for a crime is just a fine, then it's only really a law for like poor people.
00:09:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
Because if you rich and you get paid, you know, whatever the fine is, or you have like those government connections, so the fines are reduced, then like you really don't have a lot of like laws governing you. And for me, that like says something, you know, about the system that we're in. And I don't think that that is a system that needs to be maintained, especially when it's not one you know rooted in justice so part of my journey to abolition and like what actually radicalized me so it's not really one specific thing it's like a whole bunch of things that actually happen because you know i'm calling abolition a journey because
00:09:49
Books, BBQ & Black History
you're all I feel like part of abolition is always like reframing and rethinking and reconnecting just understanding that you have to kind of adjust as you're like going along because the solutions are not one size fit all. So what kind of started me on the journey was like when I was really young, I already had a recognition.
00:10:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
of like racial inequality, even if I couldn't like name it, I just noticed things that let me know that like, hmm, this is interesting because i grew up or i grew up in Eastern North Carolina, like I said, and I remember when I lived around the Greenville area. And one thing I just noted was that if I ever saw more than one cop car, I knew that it was a black person.
00:10:38
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like, and I figured that out as a child, was like, oh, that's definitely a black person. And I didn't really, like, understand what that meant, like, when I was, like, that young. But, like, I say that to say, like, I've always had an awareness of, like, police treat black people differently. I don't know that there's, yeah, I don't know that there's really ever been a time in my life where I've been like, I feel like the police are there to protect me, not even as a child.
00:11:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely not even as a child, but like, I've never had that feeling. So like, you know, that's, that's kind of the the foundation. So I've never kind of had the belief in general that police were there to save me. necessarily that I thought they were there to harm me, but like my first thought wasn't that they were there to save me just based on kind of some of my observations.
00:11:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
But that's like way, way, way back. So I'm going bring it forward a little bit to like adulthood and like when I'm just like starting to learn. So these aren't necessarily chronological order, but like this right here is just some personal things that I remember happening in the media that...
00:11:42
Books, BBQ & Black History
kind of pushed me forward in my like thought process. And one of those things was the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. And if you don't remember that, the Sandy Hook shooting was a mass shooting where 21st graders and six educators were killed again at an elementary school. And i As someone who grew up and kind of remembers Columbine, it like that for me was like very, very jarring. Because when Columbine happened, and I'm just speaking an awful like memory in right now, because I don't remember what year Columbine happened, but I definitely remember it. But like I remember like as an adult when i when Sandy Hook happened, i remember that I was at work. And like I just remember thinking to myself, I was like...
00:12:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
wow, if like people are actually okay with like white children being shot, they're like, they really don't care about like nobody, like nobody. And like that for me was like a very, very eyeopening thing because, and what does that have to do with like abolition? Because this is really a conversation around like gun laws.
00:13:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
And like people being like, oh, we can't do nothing about guns. And they just and I'm just like, no. Because you know, Matt, whether y'all realize this or not, school shootings are a uniquely American thing.
00:13:13
Books, BBQ & Black History
Am I saying that you know shootings don't happen in other places? No. But nowhere else in the world does it happen the way that it does in the United States. And I am old enough to remember that I didn't have to do active shooter training when I was a child.
00:13:29
Books, BBQ & Black History
And like people just decided that you know we can't do nothing about these guns. And again, that's a reminder for me like, oh, wow. there is a system that is not going to like address like the actual life violence and people are gonna be sacrificed. So like again, i'm I'm just paying attention to this. And then also the police did not protect those children. That that was the other really big thing is like the idea of having cops in the school to like stop mass shootings, they actually are more likely to harm the the black and brown students in the school than they are to like protect any of them. And I have yet to come across a consistent, any sort of data that indicates to me that that police in the schools like actually you know protect students. And so again, there's these contradictions that just really don't make sense to me. Yeah, so that's one. Another one is, and this one I'm not sure how many people remember, but Daniel Holtzclaw.
00:14:28
Books, BBQ & Black History
And if you don't know who Daniel Holtzclaw is, he is a police officer who was convicted. And actually, I'll just i'll just read you a little bit. And this is like trigger warning. So if this is about sexual assault. So please just be careful with this. But Daniel Holtzclaw was arrested in 2014 after a grandmother in her 50s came forward and said that an officer had pulled her over and forced her to perform oral sex.
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Books, BBQ & Black History
The police began investigating the officer who she accused and found eventually that a dozen other women came forward and said that they had been victimized by Daniel Holtzclaw in searches or traffic stops.
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Books, BBQ & Black History
Police say that Holtzclaw was able to prey on women in minority low-income neighborhoods in Oklahoma City, and he specifically targeted those women with drug addictions.
00:15:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
Those engaged in sex work, picked them up, took them back to their house, abused them. And he was able to target these marginalized women who believed they wouldn't be believed if they went to the police. One of the women testified why she didn't call the police herself. And she said, who are you going to call on the police?
00:15:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I remember that case so clearly because it was just like so upsetting because also the context of that case is that Daniel Holtzclaw specifically chose to abuse Black women because he knew that nobody would care.
00:15:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
And when he was actually convicted, I was like actually surprised. And so I do not believe in prison, but I'll, you know, talk about that in a moment. But like, I was actually surprised that he was convicted because generally, and I'm gonna talk about this too, but rapists and pedophiles do not go to jail. And especially when they are a part of like, the state. So that means like government officials, you know, police, military, ICE, all of them. And even just like general population, like statistically, it's not a crime that is generally punish punished within our society. And in the same way, when I, well, that's kind of getting into my research, but anyway, so when that happened, i was still like, wow. So again, we have a system where
00:16:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
people who are are there to quote unquote protect you also put can put you in a space where they are a danger to you. and then if the police are the ones that are violating you and they're also supposed to be the protectors, then as you know one of these victims said, who are you going to call on the police?
00:16:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I'll just say, like I've been in spaces with police and I've like heard them making jokes about like people who have experienced like sexual abuse.
00:17:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
And like that, and it and like that for me is kind of like, how, how am i supposed to trust somebody that thinks that it's a joke? You know what mean? So like that for me was one of those, again, just paying attention to it. And I'm like, you know, it's just a reminder for me, like, I'm not really fan of that system. So that's a little bit of the personal stuff. So as far as like education, so education is like a big part of like my,
00:17:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
I think thing with radicalization you know, to abolition. So I'm also a criminologist. Like I said, I'll get more into that in the next season. But as a criminologist, like a lot of what I've done been able to study like who defines crime, who created the systems, who is punished, how power... and hierarchies and social context and historical context becomes really important when you are talking about stuff and you know long story short throughout my program and really just comparing to like you know things I have seen in the world criminology taught me that the system itself functions exactly the way it was created so when people say that like, oh, we gotta, you know, again, that conversation about, oh, we gotta reform the criminal justice system. It is literally doing what it's supposed to do.
00:18:26
Books, BBQ & Black History
It's literally doing what it's supposed to do. It was never supposed to be anything other than what it actually is. It was meant to harm Black people. It was meant to harm those who are the most socially disenfranchised within society that's literally the purpose like when i was in graduate school me my classmates actually ended up calling the criminal justice system the uh i think it was the criminal control system or something like that because there's no justice in it there's no justice like race matters in the criminal justice system but money matters
00:19:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
Money is up there. Like race, you can always be not, especially if you black, like your money will only protect you for so long. But like class and money actually very, very much matter within that particular system. So I just want talk a little bit about a few things that I learned and experienced like throughout like my criminology program, when I was like studying all this stuff. So this I'm about to talk about is actually like, North Carolina history, specifically Winston-Salem. So one of the things we had to watch, my program was, we watched the documentary and i'm gonna talk about two actually, but we watched the documentary, the trials of Darrell hunt. And, I'm going to,
00:19:43
Books, BBQ & Black History
give you probably more context about this story than some of the other ones because this one is i would say relevant but i'll give you the why when i'm done so daryl hunt is a black man from winston-salem who was accused of sexual assault and murder of a white woman in 1984. she lied about that assault and he was put in prison He was released on bond in 1989 with the trial pending. Prosecutors offered Mr. Hunt a plea bargain. He could be sentenced to time already served in exchange for a guilty plea.
00:20:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
Mr. Hunt rejected the offer and faced a second trial. He was retried in rural Catawba County before an all-white jury. The main eyewitnesses from the first trial tested again testified again, and they lied in the first trial, by the way. And two jailhouse informants testified that Mr. Hunt had admitted their guilt to him that admitted his guilt to them while in prison. So he was again convicted, and this time he was sentenced to life in prison. He had been free for 11 months. In years after Mr. Hunt was convicted, years after he was is first excluded by DNA,
00:20:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
the dna the results they the results matched a man incarcerated from another murder. So Mr. Hunt was exonerated and freed in 2005. So basically, they had the deep that his DNA did not match the crime, and they actually traced it to somebody else that was in prison for a different murder.
00:21:11
Books, BBQ & Black History
in twitch so in 2004 19 years after he was let me see yeah after he was exonerated and freed willard brown the man whose dna matched the profile pleaded guilty to the murder of her name was debra sykes she was a liar i just want say that too But in 2005, Mr. Hunt founded the Darrell Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about criminal justice reform opportunities.
00:21:42
Books, BBQ & Black History
and providing resources to support individuals who were recently released from prison. Mr. Hunt's lawsuit against the city of Winston-Salem was also settled in 2007. He was awarded over a million dollars.
00:21:54
Books, BBQ & Black History
Tragically, Mr. Hunt died by suicide in North Carolina in March of 2016. He was 51 years old. And like, that story for me is like,
00:22:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like, yes, it happened in North Carolina, but, like, some context about this is, like, one of my professors, Dr. Sandra Westervelt, was helping with the Innocence Project and working on... and had been working on Daryl Hunt's, like, exoneration. So, like, I'm very fortunate to have come across, again, like I said, educators who, like...
00:22:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
truly were honest about what the systems we are dealing with actually are. And like a lot of her work, or I would say a lot of her work, but her work, you know, specifically around that, around like exonerations and like, you know, learning about Daryl Hunt was like really, like I said, it was like just life changing for me. And not only that, but like,
00:22:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
when Daryl Hunt died by suicide, like, I was actually in graduate school, and i remember, like, because she canceled class. She canceled class to actually go to, i don't know if it was the funeral or the wake, but, like, what I just remembered about that is that this man spent a majority of his life, And and I wish I had my data for me before you so that I could, like, tell you how much it was. But I can tell you that that settlement that he got from Winston-Salem was trash.
00:23:22
Books, BBQ & Black History
It was trash. Because I think at that time, one of my other classmates was actually, like, building, like, a database about, like, how much... how much money people in people who were exonerated from like life sentences or like death row and all of that, like how much money they would get. So you're wrongfully convicted, exonerated. How much is the state, you know, going to pay you back? And i I wish I could give you the exact number, but I know that for North Carolina, it was nothing. It wasn't even more than a hundred thousand.
00:23:54
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like, that was, like, the max. And it don't matter how much time I think you had, like, spent in prison at that time. And, like, so when he got out of prison, his life was, like, hard.
00:24:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like... And then he spent, like I said, like decades of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. And he spent less time as a free man than in his life than he did, you know, in prison.
00:24:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I just think about how that system stole his life from him. Like...
00:24:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
and yeah like I just think about how that system stole his life from him and again that was one of those things for me that like really really again is shifting me from oh we just gotta to reform this because all the things I'm seeing are like just terrible and like you know horrific and like that was one of those things for me like I just I just have never forgot that so if you've never seen trial The Trials of Daryl Hunt I would highly encourage you to check that out Another piece of information I came across when I was in graduate school was, I think around that time was when the documentary 13th came out. And if you have not seen 13th, you need to watch that documentary.
00:25:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like, I definitely, like, of course, there are always critiques to, like, you know, everything. But I think that that documentary, and and actually, let me tell you what 13th is. So 13th is a documentary by, it's created by, what's his name? Ava DuVernay.
00:25:32
Books, BBQ & Black History
And what it does is it really does a great job of connecting the 13th Amendment, which we've talked about all this, you know, this season. But it does a great job of talking about how the 13th Amendment did not abolish slavery, but it actually transformed it and allowed it to continue within the criminal justice system, within prisons. Because everything that was abolished for, like, slavery is allowed to be done to people who are incarcerated.
00:26:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
So if you are incarcerated or if you are labeled a criminal in society, that means that effectively your government can't enslave you again and you have no rights. And you know, the documentary did like such a great job of like making connections between, you know, it's not really a political, like it it's not one or the other with political parties. Like Democrats and Republicans are together what in the support of the prison industrial complex of the criminal justice system and the harm, you know, that it actually has. One of the things in that documentary I find to be like really, really interesting and really, again, Made me think. I remember growing up when Bill Clinton was president and like, you know, they they actually called him the first black president. Talk to some of your people who were, you know, can remember like the 90s and early 2000s. Talk to some of them and ask them about that. But like Bill Clinton, I know people know that Obama is the first, you know, black president, but Bill Clinton was before Obama. People consider Bill Clinton the first black president, which is wild.
00:27:13
Books, BBQ & Black History
wild when i think about the type person he is you know today but in that documentary they did a really great job of showing how bill clinton his wife and her little super predator comp comment that's why i never growing up for hillary clinton because she is a white supremacist in the same way that her husband is and you i'm sorry i'm going But yeah, like watching that documentary and seeing how like all the people are complicit, like Joe Biden was in that documentary, Newt Gingrich, let me see, the Clintons, Trump was in there and all of them were like supportive of you know this this system that is so harmful to like you know black people. And like, you know, I just think that documentary did a great job of tracing the line of, you know, how history is so important to understand, like, you know, current events, because you can't really, I mean, they're getting more overt with their white supremacy. And when I say overt, like white supremacy has always been there, but people have just been like hiding it. So like, there's a reason why people are covering their faces. Yeah.
00:28:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
their reason why people are covering their faces as they engage in, like, white domestic, like, terrorism, because that's what I consider them, like, terrorists. Because their whole thing is, like, they believe that they are the superior people and that people should, like, live in the way that they expect, think the way that they think, and, like, yeah, it's it's just, you know, very, very interesting. But 13th also, you know, talked about how the presenting of law and order as the only way, you know, to address crime allowed for like, racial dog whistles to essentially happen. Because again, like, you know, and again, they, they had this literally in the documentary about how like, there were people in the government that were like, Oh, we know we can't call them the N word no more. But if we say things like states rights, or if we say things like, you know, we're going to be tough on crime, but,
00:29:21
Books, BBQ & Black History
it only targets like specific groups of people. So even though you're not saying black people, you still mean black people. Cause people associate crime with black people when in actuality, white people commit a majority of the crimes, but black people are the like face of it because you know, who has control of the media?
00:29:44
Books, BBQ & Black History
White people. And so, The documentary also included, you know, conversation about something that's known as a Southern strategy. And again, this is about racism again. So the Southern strategy is when politicians use racism to invoke racial fears for white people to support them, especially like Southern white people. So like,
00:30:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
If you have been paying attention to what has been happening, just in general, but especially over the past 10, 15 years, those racist dog whistles, I don't even consider them dog whistles. They are like blatantly racist, overtly racist. It ain't even like, you know, hidden at this point.
00:30:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
And that's kind of you know, the the shift. but But anyway, so like the Southern strategy actually does work because like white people will vote against their interests if they believe that it will prevent black people from getting stuff.
00:30:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
If they believe it will prevent immigrants, you know, from getting stuff. That's why I like all this stuff. Anyway, but anyway, yes. So these are things, again, i just learned in this documentary, you know, during graduate school. So again,
00:31:01
Books, BBQ & Black History
as you can tell, just by, you know, my passion in this clearly did something to my spirit. So that's pushing me again, you know, towards this idea of abolition. Just learning in general about like, oh, I'm sorry.
Systemic Injustice and Influential Media
00:31:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
Another book that I came across during that time was Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. And I know that like, that's the movie that Michael B. Jordan is in and glad it got a movie. But, you know, for me, that book was also a
00:31:33
Books, BBQ & Black History
I don't know. Again, it's like a a lot of people just reframe the thought. So just mercy and just who Bryan Stevenson is. So Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice initial Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need. The poor, the wrongly condemned women and children are trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian,
00:31:57
Books, BBQ & Black History
mcmmiion A young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder murder he insisted he didn't complete commit. The case drew Bryant into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.
00:32:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
Yeah, that was that book was also like a lot you know as well. But specifically, like not to get too much into the book, that's a little synopsis. And I would highly encourage you read it or go watch the movie if you haven't. But like what really got me was like this definition of the actual concept of just mercy. Because if you read the book, like it'll talk to you a little bit about what Bryan Stevenson means like that means by that. And so I'm going just read you a couple of things from a couple of quotes from that book very short. So Just Mercy is talking about the true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
00:32:54
Books, BBQ & Black History
And he also says each one of us is more than the worst thing that we've ever done. and like... when i read about kind of that concept, it just reminded me that like the historical and social context by which we become the version of ourselves,
00:33:17
Books, BBQ & Black History
is something that I find to be important to like you know always consider. Because you know in this book, it really made me think about like how we treat like the worst among us.
00:33:31
Books, BBQ & Black History
it's going to kind of be the foundation for that ripples through like everything else. And so like, just thinking about like how incarcerated people are treated. Like I think about like climate change and like how hot it is and how these people in prisons, I'm sure that they're not thinking about air conditioning.
00:33:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
I'm sure they're not thinking about like the fact that these places are built in a way that, know, violates like human dignity violates you know the the real human need for like community those sorts of things you charge people to be able to see their families you create a system where sexual assault is actually a legalized part of the process because strip searches and cavity searches are sexual assault it does not matter that people have said that they are legal people being able to violate your body in that sort of way is actually very wild.
00:34:32
Books, BBQ & Black History
It is actually very wild. And you know i think about people making jokes about people going to prison. And I think about you know how people, there are people that believe that people in prison deserve be harmed. And to me, that's really that conversation about oppression in that if you make this behavior okay for one person, then it's okay you know for anybody because anybody can be a criminal.
00:34:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
Because right now as we are you know as I'm recording this, I think about how Trump said, you know what? If you are anti-fascist, I'm going to designate you a criminal. And once they designate you a criminal, guess what? They can disappear you into the system.
00:35:12
Books, BBQ & Black History
So like people not having grace and mercy for those who are... And this isn't me saying like people shouldn't be held accountable. but I'm not going to treat people like they are not human because they have done something wrong.
00:35:31
Books, BBQ & Black History
I'm not going to treat people like they're not human. And like the fact that people are okay with that, especially within a system that is clearly built on inequality is, you know, again, that influences the ways that we kind of engage other people in our society.
00:35:50
Books, BBQ & Black History
And it creates, again, a hierarchy. And it also makes that behavior possible to happen to you. I also want to mention Michelle Alexander and the Greensboro Police Department, because also when I was in graduate school, one of the books that I read was The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. and in that book, you know, Michelle Alexander basically noted how, you know, mass incarceration created don't even want say created, it but continues the
00:36:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
apartheid essentially or the caste you know sort of system of black people by creating like a kind of separate but equal sort of thing. So Jim Crow has continued with mass incarceration because it is still reaffirming kind of that white supremacist of violence that has always been allowed, you know, against Black people. And so I'm bringing her up specifically because in 2015, there was a New York Times article called The Disproportionate Risk of Driving While Black.
00:37:01
Books, BBQ & Black History
And if you have not read that, I remember this article because then I was in school during that time. But that article, the New York Times, the Greensboro Police Department, is so racist that the New York Times wrote about them.
00:37:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
So the New York Times evaluated tens of thousands of traffic stops and years of arrest data and found that in Greensboro, North Carolina, police pulled over African-American drivers for traffic violations at a rate far out of proportion with their share of the local driving population. They used their discretion to search black drivers or their cars more than twice as often as white drivers, even though they found drugs or weapons significantly more often when the driver was white.
00:37:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
So what does that mean? It means that the Greensboro Police Department were pulling Black people over at a higher rate than they were even represented in the actual like population.
00:37:56
Books, BBQ & Black History
And again, that's the indication of like something happening. That's the DWB driving while black. So like, again, seeing this and I remember going to like, don't remember what the event was called, but Michelle Alexander came to Greensboro. want to say like maybe it was either 2015 or 2016. And Nancy Vaughn was the mayor of Greensboro at that time.
00:38:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I'll never forget that woman getting up there saying like how the Greensboro police have a great history with the city of Greensboro. Mind you, this same police department collaborated with Nazis and the KKK and killed people in Greensboro, you know.
00:38:38
Books, BBQ & Black History
But I digress. So she was saying all this and it was so interesting because I remember Michelle Alexander basically like, but looking at her and like challenging her on that because she had read that New York Times article about the Greensboro Police Department.
00:38:56
Books, BBQ & Black History
And like, that for me was also like, radicalizing because it showed me how you can speak truth to power right to somebody face because she really tried to lie about who the police were and michelle knew better so she didn't let her just say what she said and let it slide and like that for me is again something powerful because a lot of times people want you to shirk and like not say nothing out of fear of like consequence but like you know again that to me is like that speaking truth to power And again, a part of that radicalization.
00:39:33
Books, BBQ & Black History
of course, Black history that I've learned about has like been such so impactful to me. So again, not just Black history, but like the Black knowledge. So the people that I'm talking about, all these are Black people. So I'm learning about like you know acts of Black resistance and you know abolition and about these people speaking truth to power so you know ida b wells harriet jacob's w.e.b du bois sojourn the truth like all of these different people i'm learning about whereas like in school i've been just taught that like oh well abraham lincoln freed the slaves emancipation proclamation that's that's what happened white people did not free black people black people freed themselves
00:40:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
I want you to hear me when I say that. Black people freed themselves. And so for me, like to come from a lineage of people like that, Like, how can not that not, like, radicalize me against the system, you know, that, you know, I'm up against? Like, why would I want to reform a system that perpetuates, like, the level of violence that it does and has done, like, since it was created? Like, that violence, like, never stops. So for me, I'm just like, at what point do people say, like, enough is enough? Because if I'm seeing that violence all the way back from when, you know, this country was, like, stolen, you
00:40:51
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I see it today. Then clearly there's no room in my mind for like reform because that you've had time. You've had time and you still have chosen to harm. So like for me, there is no reform to be done. Burn it all down. But we'll get to the good part. It's not just burn it all down. also as far as like radicalizing me i think specifically about the black lives matter movement and the ferguson uprisings so the 24 the the ferguson of uprisings
00:41:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
Followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. 2014, an unarmed 18 year old, black boy, who was killed by a white police officer by the name of Jaron Wilson.
00:41:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
And that shooting sparked outrage and a wave of demonstrations. And I know that there there are lots of cases I could actually talk about, but I'm specifically mentioning that one because to me, this was also around the time where one, you know, Black Lives Matter was getting bigger. And also because this was also kind of the recognition of like the power of social media because the news be lying all the time.
00:42:03
Books, BBQ & Black History
to Like they be lying all the time. And like, but like on my way to abolition, like I have the understanding of like, just because the police say something is true. Like I just automatically assume that they're lying.
00:42:13
Books, BBQ & Black History
like I just automatically assume that they're lying. and the Ferguson uprisings and you know the the people who were like boots on the ground that were actually documenting through videos all these things that were happening really clashed with that narrative of black police being protectors because i just will never forget the military equipment I saw. i will never forget the seeing the sniper pointed at Black children.
00:42:43
Books, BBQ & Black History
you Black youth. And that's why when people talk to me about like not being violent, I'm like, they literally showed up because someone was... A member of their community was murdered. And, you know, the St. Louis Police Department already had, like...
00:43:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
problems they were already you know disenfranchised it so they were known to be like racist so like you know it's murder they're literally allowed to legally murder people because I don't care what nobody say what your politic is stealing is not a death sentence especially living in a society that is clearly hoarding resources and making them inequitable for people especially black people and that for me was like very jarring because it reminded me that like wow black people been demanding justice for you know wow and the fact that people just saying black lives matter was enough for people to get upset or you know enough for people to be like why are y'all saying that because like all lives matter thing is like wild But the fact that saying that Black Lives Matter was enough to be met with like that much pushback, the fact that you know saying that Black people do not deserve to be killed by the state was enough for the state to bring violence to them, like to me kind of made the point again of like, there is no reforming this. This is who they are. Violence is what they want.
00:44:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
and no reform of that is actually going to stop it. So it really just got to be gotten rid of. So that for me was like a really big, like organizing like sort of thing.
00:44:29
Books, BBQ & Black History
And so i would say those are, there's just so much more, but those for me are like kind of some of the biggest things that I can just recount of being like, radicalizing sorts of things for me. And things continue to radicalize radicalize me. It's not just one, but a variety of things. Also would like to talk about... Oh, I'm sorry. This is still...
00:44:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
kind of talking about, well, want to say this recognize lie me, but this is a little bit about what I mean about abolitionist praxis. So I've said before, you know, I'm a social scientist, educator with an abolitionist praxis. And I purposely not like gone too deep into that because I wanted to actually talk about what that means to me. So praxis is really talking about like like action. So for me, it's talking about how do you put this idea of abolition, meaning that I don't believe in prisons. I don't believe in like carceral punishment. I believe in accountability for sure. But,
00:45:29
Books, BBQ & Black History
These are just the ways that I show up in my real life to to work toward in that journey towards abolition, I would say. These are the ways that it shows up in my real life and everyday behaviors. And so the first one is like challenging authority. I do not like people telling me what to do.
00:45:48
Books, BBQ & Black History
And, you know, that there's a lot of reasons for that. But one thing is also that, like, I do not inherently respect authority. I need to know what is the character of the person telling me, like, what's right or wrong. Just because you were in a position of power, like, over me in a, you know,
00:46:05
Books, BBQ & Black History
hierarchy that I did not create does not mean that I am going to like just go along with whatever you say that's why we're actually yeah but like I definitely believe in like you know challenging authority and so I'll at least give this example so example of that for me is like there's nothing that Trump can say that I'm going to be like let me just do what he said that man is a pedophile a white supremacist a bigot a you know he it Everything.
00:46:32
Books, BBQ & Black History
He's all that bad stuff. And people are still deferring to his authority because of the office that he is in. And like that for me is just like, i don't think like that. Like, I don't care like who you are. If I know something is morally unacceptable or I know that you are not a good person.
00:46:51
Books, BBQ & Black History
You can't tell me nothing. You ain't going to tell me nothing. That to me is a part of abolitionist practice. Like I do not just fall in line. And to me, that's actually a superpower because that's also how you get into genocidal behavior by just doing your job.
00:47:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
another part of my abolitionist practice is I do not condemn the oppressed for their tactics. whatever they may be.
00:47:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
And this is where you should for sure check out my research, Politics of Peace, which talks about who is allowed to be violent because I don't consider self-defense violence.
00:47:27
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like self-defense is not violence. So, you know, even when, you know, we have, when people talk about like, people destroying these cities after like, you know, cops kill somebody. They're like, oh, well, they're, you know, why would like, I'm not even going to explain that to people because this is one of those things, if you don't, those who get it who will, those who don't just won't. But like, I am never going to tell somebody how to respond to harm that has been done to them because,
00:47:57
Books, BBQ & Black History
It is not you. And like, and especially when we're talking about systemic oppression, people have the right to defend themselves. Like that, it yeah, I'll just leave that there.
00:48:11
Books, BBQ & Black History
Another part of my abolitionist practice is recognizing and and and always anonymizing systems of harm. So I'm always thinking about root causes of harm instead of just solely blaming individuals. And this does not mean that there is no accountability. So an example of what this might look like for me is, is,
00:48:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
I talked about this in the episode about my research as well. But, like, my dad is an abuser. He abused his wife. He abused his kids. And, like...
00:48:42
Books, BBQ & Black History
That behavior is absolutely not okay. However, because I understand that there are root causes to certain behaviors and that he didn't just become an abusive man, it required me to consider like how abuse actually works. And a lot of it has to do with how children are socialized and also like patriarchy and the idea of like, you know, using violence and aggression to like, you know, control people. And my dad also came from a family where his dad was violent and his, you know, it and he beat his wife. So like, that's what he experienced. And again, this is not saying that that is okay, but it is me getting context of how to prevent that, like in the future. So it means that the conversation about like how young people are socialized is really, really, really important.
00:49:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
And like, as far as accountability, I just don't have a relationship with him. So like, it's not a matter of like saying that, oh, you know, people aren't going to be held accountable. But for me, it's very much of like, well, how did this happen? And what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen? But if it has happened, how can we also make sure that your harm is something that is addressed?
00:49:57
Books, BBQ & Black History
And that's going to be like kind of on an individual basis, because how people perceive harm and what they feel like is a solution is going to be like different. And that kind of goes to my next part of that is like part of my abolitionist practices is also like focusing on victims harm and what they actually need. And again, this does not mean that there is not accountability. It means that instead of focusing on just punishing people, you find out what the victim actually needs. And that to me is a little bit harder because it's not a one size fit all. And it's not always going to be a, this is something that is resolved, you know, immediately because harm doesn't like disappear. The impact of harm doesn't just like go away. Sometimes it's lifelong, you know, those sorts of things. So like,
00:50:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
is really recognizing that you have to be open to there is no one right way to address the ways that people are harmed and in respecting kind of the individual the individualism of people and their experiences it just takes more work i would say but i think the outcome is just so much more efficient Another part of this abolitionist practice, so analyzing these systems of harm, would be killing the cop in your head.
Alternatives to Punishment and Community Empowerment
00:51:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
And, like, this idea of, like, you know, telling on people or they need to be punished for this or, you know, just the idea of, like,
00:51:27
Books, BBQ & Black History
surveilling people and like like basically all the pieces of like the the criminal justice system so when i think about you know accountability there there are lots of ways you know to address like harm some of them ain't gonna talk about up here but like there are many different ways to address harm but like you have to be open to more than just like the idea of like punishment. I think a great example of that would be like, if would be like kind of the idea of like, if your only thought when children misbehave is you got to beat them.
00:52:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
That's the cop in your head. That's the overseer in your head. Like, and you really got to work that out of like why that would be, you know, the, the first person you would, or first thought that you would like actually have.
00:52:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
and that again, for me goes back to what violence actually is. So, you know, when I think about abolition, it isn't just about the physical violence, that is done to people. It's also about poverty. It's also about the destruction of land, the defunding of education, the denial of bodily autonomy and the normalization of like white supremacist ideology. It's also recognizing state sponsored violence you know in all forms. So like even though you know i'd be talking about the police, like the military is a part of that. The ICE is like absolutely a part of that. you know Schools can be a part of that. Healthcare can be a part of that. like It's just recognizing that there are a lot of spaces where violence is actually sanctioned by the government. and just being aware of those things and having analysis of them so that you can protect yourself and people, you know, within your community.
00:53:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
also a part of that recognizing, analyzing systems of harm is, you know, just continuing to do work to destroy a system that continues to reform itself.
00:53:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
This system literally has existed the entire time the United States has been here. It's just morphed into something. So chattel slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, all this stuff with immigration, all of this stems from the original genocides of black and indigenous people and the enslavement and kidnapping and human trafficking of black people. And until that, that is the foundation that everything in this society is built on. And, you know, no matter how much time has changed, that has still, you know, kind of remained the same. That's why, you know, when people want to outsource like the violence, I'm very adamant about this is not Nazi behavior. This is not, you know, Israel behavior. it is literally homegrown. America has been like this forever, forever.
00:54:26
Books, BBQ & Black History
And if you are just now seeing this and I really, well, this is for, you know, this podcast is created and centering like black people. So I don't even care about that part I was about to say, but like, yeah, it has always been, you know, this sort of thing. But I don't want it to just be about like, you know, when we're talking about abolitionist practice, it's not just about like systems of harm again. So those are the places that are like created to, create unequal conditions and all of that. But it's also about, for me, as far as practice, is creating and learning about life-affirming institutions. And this was actually a concept I learned from Maryam Caba, a noted abolitionist, and I'll talk more about them
00:55:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
a little bit later, but life-affirming institutions are systems that affirm and support life and don't intentionally cause harm. And there life-affirming institutions that like already exist. And going to just talk a little bit about some of the things i have seen, learned about as far as life-affirming. So some life-affirming institutions that already exist would be like just the indigenous practices that were here before like colonialism so the ways that people were tending the land the matriarchal and matrilineal social structures you know where children are centered and like community is valued and violence isn't used as a means to like control people Black herbalism and connections to spirituality. So like that to me would be, and so when I say indigenous, it means having a connection to an ancestral land and, you know, Black herbalism and like just having a relationship like with, you know, plants and all of those sorts of things, that's indigenous to Black people. Like they literally stole Black people from Africa because of their connection to the land. And we've been like disconnected from that.
00:56:22
Books, BBQ & Black History
And so like, you know, That to me is a life affirming institution because when you have a connection to the land, you care more about life. and that's something that's really really common when you look into a lot of indigenous cultures libraries are what i would also consider a life-affirming institution and libraries are life-affirming in that books provide possibilities and ways to reframe your thinking it gives you something to escape to it gives you something to aspire to it can inspire you It can make space for you in a way that you don't feel like the real world is. It is a information highway and it is free. Like, you know, I have no, you know, no notes about libraries because they are amazing.
00:57:12
Books, BBQ & Black History
all also exist freedom schools. So freedom schools teach Black children, you know, essentially what they need to know and not necessarily U.S. propaganda. And freedom schools were actually born out of the Black radical tradition. And this is one those ones where going give very brief background because I really, really want to make sure that, yeah, I really want make sure that people know more about them. That's all I'm going right now. But yeah, freedom schools have origins in Mississippi Freedom Summer.
00:57:47
Books, BBQ & Black History
So around 1964. This brought college students from around the country to Mississippi. to secure justice and voting rights for Black citizens. These early freedom schools aimed at keeping Black children and youth safe and giving them rich educational experiences that were not offered in public schools. In a variety of makeshift settings, college student volunteers provided instruction in reading, writing, humanities, mathematics, and science, along with subjects not taught in Mississippi public schools, such as Black history and constitutional rights. All of their instruction was tailored to encourage
00:58:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
children and youth to become independent thinkers, problem solvers, and agents of change in their own communities. I love freedom schools. I have to say that. I love freedom schools, especially as someone who is an educator. Special shout out to Lit City Freedom School and Parkland Freedom School. But I love freedom schools because they do what public education says that it should be doing.
00:58:43
Books, BBQ & Black History
But like they provide you know, a challenge to the white supremacist propaganda, you know, that people are receiving in public education, an accurate version of history, books written by people, you know, that look like you.
00:58:59
Books, BBQ & Black History
it is, and and you know, the ones that I'm at are abolitionist spaces. So like, just the killing the cop in your head and like not treating and like not, what's that quote? Black youth are a treasure to are not problems to be solved but treasures to behold and like reframing and creating a space where black youth get to like be black and like understand that there's nothing wrong with being black like
00:59:32
Books, BBQ & Black History
Yeah, like, yeah, i could I could go so much into them, but like, I really want to give them their own special episode. But yes, freedom schools are a life affirming institution. And I would also say that for me is the model that education should be because yes.
00:59:47
Books, BBQ & Black History
Also, some other community organizing that I've seen, you know, as far as like life affirming institutions would be the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro. It's a community-based grassroots empowerment organization rooted in Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy of proactive struggles for racial and economic justice.
01:00:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
The beloved community center was officially founded in 1991 by Reverend Barbara Dua, Reverend Z. Holler, and Reverend Nelson N. Johnson. You can check out episode five to learn more about the beloved community center and some of their work and their connection to the Greensboro massacre.
01:00:26
Books, BBQ & Black History
Another example of a life-affirming institution that exists is the Interactive Resource Center. This is also in Greensboro and it is a place for people experiencing homelessness to congregate in a safe space, connect with important services and join in fellowship with one another.
01:00:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
This is a safe place to rest, take care of basic needs, and access the services and community that make all the differences. Guests of the IRC can go there to take a class, do laundry, meet a case manager, or get they met get their mail. Sometimes they just need to sit in the day room and enjoy a conversation. Here you'll find everything from showers classrooms and meeting spaces of irc help people reconnect with their own lives and with the community at large and i love the irc because i think when i had like actually started school in greensboro that like they had only been open for like a couple of years so the fact that they're still open all this time later is like just so beautiful and i love
01:01:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
places that are created for like the most vulnerable because people like because people really don't think about barriers that just don't affect them. So like, you know, if you do not have housing, it's hard to get a job because you don't have a mailing address. And some places you can't even, you know, apply for jobs if you don't have a mailing address. So the IRC allows, you know, people who are experiencing housing instability that they can use them for, you know, mail. They can go there, take showers. It's just a I love it because it is a space that reminds people who are in a who a vulnerable season of their lives that they still matter.
01:02:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
And, you know, I'm sorry. Yeah, i I'm sitting here thinking about this, like all the stuff that's going on. But like, you know, the city of Greensboro, like it's trying to like defund them. Like they'll give more money to the police department than they will by the IRC or, you know, the things that they need to make sure that people, these people have housing. And, you know, but the IRC is like filling that gap of something. So again, I just wanted to talk about them as well.
01:02:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
As far as like, again, life affirmed. Well, yeah. So now want to talk a little bit. Those were like my, i guess like that's my little synopsis of like abolitionist praxis and like, you know, what that looks like for me. So of course, like, like i said, it was life affirming institutions and the systems of harm. So I want to talk a little bit about some of the work that I've done. So I actually do a lot of work with Triad Abolition Project and just like Freedom School.
01:03:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
they're going to get their own special conversation. But Tryout Abolition Project is a grassroots abolitionist community in North Carolina. And so I've done a lot of work with them, but just a list of things I kind of do in my spare time when I am not recording podcasts or teaching. is I do a lot of political education in the community. And it's very important for me because i as someone who is a teacher in academia, I also feel like
01:03:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
I need to make what I talk about accessible to other people. And so when I am doing political education, that for me is always going to be free for the community. And especially when it is involving Black people.
01:03:50
Books, BBQ & Black History
Any political education that I do will center Black people and historically marginalized people. I do grant writing, so helping secure funds for you know different sorts of things. Special shout out to Ben and Jerry's.
01:04:03
Books, BBQ & Black History
I try to invest my time in youth, or my time, my knowledge, my resources to essentially help them understand the power that they have and to, you know, i don't want to say that I'll be teaching them not to respect authority, but yeah, so I didn't say it, but Yeah, so i also you know do a lot of learning. like I'm going to continue to learn and you know about so, so many things. And part of that learning is so that I can advocate for the most vulnerable. I think I said before, like my degree, so I have a master's degree in sociology and a bachelor's degree in human development and family studies.
01:04:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
Years and years and years and years of experience with other stuff. but I only consider my degrees relevant in the sense of it allows me like they give me power in a system you know in a capitalist system but I believe in punching up and not down so I'm never going to weaponize my knowledge as people who you know are willing to learn and want to learn but people who are bigots like I, depending on how I feel, like, you know, i will definitely be packing people up with, like, their bigotry because I have such a deep understanding of, like, the real life consequences that it has that I don't really have, like, a lot of tolerance for, like, people who celebrate or defend abusers or homophobes or misogynists or, you know, people who are okay with harming children. There are just some things that I just don't you know tolerate. And a lot of my work is for, you know if I'm gonna advocate, it's so that like I'm not gonna make a queer person like have to speak up for themself, especially if I'm in a space with them.
01:05:57
Books, BBQ & Black History
like that's that's the work is to take that burden off of other people who are already always like kind of experiencing it so that to me is really important and for me that's that conversation about what is known as like theory versus practice so theory would be like the knowledge that i have you know about crime about you know hierarchies about white supremacy all the knowledge i have about black history that would be like the theory But I am more about like praxis because even though I've learned all this stuff, what is the point of it if I'm not doing nothing with it? So I use my knowledge to engage in action.
01:06:38
Books, BBQ & Black History
And education is always important to me because a It's important for me to learn because there's always something for me to... Because we're always to need to learn something. But it's also important for me to teach others, you know, some of the stuff that I know so that they can, you know, shape the things that they want. i am really big on like encouraging people to care about learning. and And I really like to do that by like finding out what people want to learn about. And then I kind of go from there. So example would be is I let students one year ask me like,
01:07:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
you know, I'll ask them, like, oh, what do you want to learn about? And I was and i tell them, like, if you want to learn about something, you got to be clear about how this connects to what we're talking about in class and how we can frame this. And so I had students made an argument about an NBA 2K game, that we want that to be some content that we talked about. And we had, like, a really great conversation about gender inequality and capitalism and all of that and it was so engaging but part of it is that I didn't just tell them what they were going to learn I gave them some agency in what they were learning and I think that that's hard for people to give up some of their power whereas I feel like power is meant to be
01:07:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
is meant to be used to uplift like other people and pass things along so it's also important for me in my practice to connect youth community opportunities so that they have the space to grow and you know part of that is trusting that they will you know meet the moment but you have to you know be open to sharing those opportunities so i'm more of a i'm trying to pull people in with me as opposed to being the only one at the seat of the table. I don't even want to be at the seat of the table, you know, with white people in that sense. Like I would like to create a space, you know, specifically that centers black folks.
01:08:31
Books, BBQ & Black History
And yeah, and the last part of, you know, kind of talk about my work and, you know, especially my abolitionist practices is that I am always considering the most vulnerable in any institution that I am in. It doesn't matter what I am doing. I am probably thinking about what is Black people's experience, what are young people's experience, what are disabled people's experience, what are LGBTQIA people's experience, the poor, anyone who is considered vulnerable. That's who I'm thinking about when I'm in an institution. And when you think about those groups of people in an institution, lot of times they don't really like that when you point it out. But that is, you know, who I am as a person. So that's how it kind of shows up in my organizing work. So now i want to talk about why black folks should care about abolition. So really only, well, I won't say only, but a few things. The first is prison does not do what people think that it does. And a lot of people think that, oh, people go to prison to like punish people who are you know doing wrong and we get the bad people out the streets. And so like one of the biggest critiques, there people have lots of critiques of abolition, which is very fair. But one of the biggest critiques of like what happens if there are no prisons is people will say, well what happened to the rapists and pedophiles?
01:09:51
Books, BBQ & Black History
So let me give you some er statistics in beta about this. And I'm just say some stuff. So what happens to rapists and pedophiles as a response to why prisons got to exist? Where are going put the rapists and pedophiles? So first of all, i want to remind you of the Epstein files.
01:10:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
And i would ask you what has happened to anyone who has been in those Epstein files, because there were rapists, pedophiles, baby eating, murder. And what happened to those people? What are they doing with themselves right now?
01:10:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
So that's one. Also want to point out from Rain, out of every 1,000 suspected perpetrators of rape referred to prosecutors, 520 will be released, either because they post a bill or for some other reason while awaiting trial.
01:10:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
From North Carolina, WUNC News. Fewer than one in four defendants charged with sexual assault in North Carolina can expect to be convicted of that charge or a related reduced charge in some parts of the state generate few, if any, sexual assault convictions, according to Carolina Public Press's analysis of state court data. They examined sexual assault cases over a four and a half year period from 2014 2018, and the data showed that... 1,019 people were charged with sexual assault. And of those charged, juries convicted defendants about 2% of the time. 2% of the time,
01:11:20
Books, BBQ & Black History
people were convicted of this crime. Okay. So now let's talk about clearance rates. So a clearance rate, when you were talking about crimes, is defined as, is closing or clearing a case. And the two ways that it can happen based on the FBI's uniform crime report is one, by arrest or solve for crime reporting purposes.
01:11:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
Secondly, it can be cleared by exceptional means in certain situations, elements beyond law enforcement controls, prevent the agency from arresting and formally charging the offender. When this occurs, the agency can clear the offense exceptionally. An exception example example of exceptional means would be, but are not limited to, death of the offender, suicide or justifiably killed by police or citizen, the victim's refusal refusal to cop cooperate with prosecution after the offender has been identified.
01:12:13
Books, BBQ & Black History
So why did I read you all that, especially about the clearance rate? So the thing about the clearance rate is that the clearance rate is literally how effective are the police at solving crimes?
01:12:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
So let me tell you about, because remember, this started with a question of talking about how People don't, doesn't do what people think that it does. So what happens to rapists and pedophiles? Cause they clearly need to go to prison. So let me read you, the clearance rate, on the North Carolina state Bureau of investigation. And this is 2024.
01:12:42
Books, BBQ & Black History
This is, I'll have this data for you when I share my, kind of recap of like the full season, but I'm going to read you what it says about the crime of, i' and I'm going to, I'm to rape then show you some other crimes. So in the year 2024, it says that there were 2,981 offenses of rape in the state of North Carolina and the percentage of those clear is 18.6 percent
01:13:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
so 18.6 percent and again clearest rate is talking about how successful they are when like closing their cases so 18.6 percent For violent crimes in general in North Carolina, there were 39,813 those crimes committed in the year we have record of. And the percentage of those that were cleared,
01:13:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
All right. And for property crimes committed in North Carolina, 210,031 and they have a 12.7% clearance rate.
01:13:48
Books, BBQ & Black History
So why am I reading you these numbers? Because if police are really there to like stop crime, these are actually very, very bad numbers because it means that you're not solving like crime. So like,
01:14:03
Books, BBQ & Black History
Rapists and pedophiles are not in jail. They're actually, a lot of them are in positions of power. And the the crimes that people are, like, the crimes that they are dealing with, they're also not, like,
01:14:17
Books, BBQ & Black History
resolving them. So, yeah. So again, prisons don't do what people think that they're actually doing because they don't even solve crimes and police don't prevent crimes. Education, healthcare, housing, access to food, all all of that would do more to prevent crime than literally anything that the police are doing.
01:14:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
another reason that Black people should care about abolition is the original abolitionist movement is Black. Like, the original abolition movement is about abolishing chattel slavery, which specifically happened to Black people.
01:14:49
Books, BBQ & Black History
the current iteration that we're living in, so the abolition that we're talking about right now with the prison industrial complex is literally a reef is a morphed version of like slavery. So it is a very Black resistance movement, which to me makes it like even more powerful because this is something that we created for ourselves, which means that we can continue recreating it in the ways that we need to.
01:15:17
Books, BBQ & Black History
Also, Black people should care about abolition because we live in a world built on anti-Blackness and that can't be reformed because people still talking about respecting the Constitution and how great, you know, like celebrating, like people are celebrating the United States as if it is not one of the most evil, you know, empires that we have in like recent history. And people are celebrating that and thinking it could be reformed as opposed to like it just needs to be rebuilt. also abolition matters because a big part of abolition is the radical imagination the oppressors have a very active imagination if you think about project 2025 as active imagination when people start saying like oh well we can't do that what's gonna like they have a great imagination of the harm that they want to bring to you and you telling me that you can't imagine anything you know outside of that
01:16:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
and that for me is also it also makes me think about this book that i i can't remember the i think it's called like parenting towards abolition but there was a a part in there of a chapter called imagination party and that would really resonate with me i want to mention it right here because imagination party was talking about the value of not just youth but they talked about toddlers and they talked about how you know we can be and We can learn from toddlers as far as like imagination because if you talk to like you know kids or that are you know of that age, then there is no limitation to their imagination. If they believe that the sky is purple, that's what it is.
01:16:54
Books, BBQ & Black History
If they say hot dogs are made out of apples, that's what it is. Yes, I know those things don't make sense. But when you talk to a toddler, they're not limited by the confines of like the world that they're living in. And to me, that's something that's really beautiful and unique about children.
01:17:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
because they, their imagination gets limited, you know, by the systems in our society and the adults who kind of, you know, take that out of them. And to me, that's one of the most beautiful things about like youth is that ability to have this imagination.
01:17:27
Books, BBQ & Black History
And so, you know, as an abolitionist, burning down the world that we're in or destroying it actually means nothing if you're not thinking about building, you know, something else. And it's also important for Black folks to know about abolition because learning the difference between life-affirming institutions and systems of harm is like super, super important. And when I think about like world building and life affirming institutions, I think about how if something harms children directly or indirectly, it's probably harmful, no matter what system you're trying to create.
01:18:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
I think about patriarchy as a system of harm because it centers men, whereas matriarchy I see as a system, a life affirming institution because it is one that centers children.
01:18:11
Books, BBQ & Black History
And that to me is a more natural hierarchy than centering men. Abolition is not a one size fits all thing. It's only limited by what's possible to your imagination. And that's why, you know, I see children as being like really, really important to society because that's where you're going to get a lot of of imagination. Like a lot of movements like need to be led by youth because you know, old folks be stuck in their own way.
01:18:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
A notable person that I must mention with this conversation about abolition is, of course, Angela Davis. Angela Davis is a political activist, author, and professor. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944.
01:18:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the country. Her neighborhood was nicknamed Dynamite Hill. Angela joined the Black Panthers, which was created to unify Black people, and they fought against police brutality against ford the African-American community.
01:19:11
Books, BBQ & Black History
Angela fought for economic, racial, and gender equality. She came out as a lesbian and fought to tackle oppression for the LGBTQIA community.
01:19:20
Books, BBQ & Black History
And when she was spent 18 months in prison, she was able to understand how mistreated women were in jail. She's published many books. And one that I'm about to mention right now is, our prisons obsolete. I think I have said this before, but like that to me is up there with a bit the Beth, the Richie arrested justice book.
01:19:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
was a book assigned to me in a criminology course and like just the question of are prisons obsolete was enough to like blow my mind if you have not read the book i highly highly recommend it because it's such a great introduction to abolition in my view and what impact has she had on my abolitionist journey one understanding that reform does not work the second understanding the importance of asking questions because that question our prison is obsolete it's really important to ask the questions that people ain't asking and that's what i think about my questions of like who is allowed to be violent and why like i feel like that's that sort of question because like instead of asking me about peace ask me about the violence
01:20:21
Books, BBQ & Black History
I think she has impacted my view on centering the most vulnerable and also with pointing out contradictions in the criminal justice system. Again, like don't ask me about violence when y'all the ones with the guns. That's, you know, ridiculous. So now we can talk about our
Healing Justice and Season Conclusion
01:20:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
excerpt. So the excerpt that I read today is from a book called Healing Justice Lineages, Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation and Collective Care and Safety. And this is by Kara Page and Erica Woodland. This is actually a book that we read within at within Triad Abolition Project with our political education. And I chose this particular book and this particular chapter, I'm sorry, this particular excerpt, because it explains that we must demand what we need and not accept the crumbs that continue to be offered. It's also reminding people that the battles being fought right now are generations old. So remembering and honoring past sacrifices of our ancestors also gives us strength to recognize the horrors of today.
01:21:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
and imagine a future we may never see. I chose this passage because it's a great example of holding simultaneous truths that things are really bad, but they are not new and they don't have to be this way. And we can shape kind of what we would like to see. if my ancestors didn't think that they would ever be free of their condition, they would not have resisted it. and we would still be in chains.
01:21:47
Books, BBQ & Black History
And that is the lineage I come from. So some of us really are our ancestors while the stream. So I'm not really with that. You know, i am not my ancestors because I for i am. I am. So like, i don't, you know, even ascribe to that. Also important because this excerpt reminds me that Just the importance of accepting that you are building something that you can't see and you may never see. And it's that reminder that abolition is a journey and not a you know a destination.
01:22:20
Books, BBQ & Black History
inspirational black quote for today comes from Maryam Kaba and it says refusal because we cannot collaborate with the prison industrial complex as evil will only collaborate with evil June Jordan care because care is the antidote to violence Sadia Hartman Collectivity, because everything worthwhile is done with others.
01:22:42
Books, BBQ & Black History
Musa Kaba. This, again, is from Mariam Kaba. We do this till we free us. Abolition is organizing and transforming justice. Mariam Kaba is an organizer, educator, archivist, and cute curator. Her work focuses on ending violence, Miriam's work focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex, transformative justice, and supporting youth leadership development. I chose this quote because Miriam's abolitionist work is a reminder for me that there are others who share a similar politic to me. And that, again, there have been people engaging in this work long before i even learned these words. This quote from Mary M is quite literally a plan to challenge the status quo, refusing to accept the violence of the system, life affirming institutions over systems of harm and community being stronger than individuals.
01:23:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
That is the antithesis to the word you know the world that we're living in. so i kind of get from this that we can actually build a new world while honoring what we've learned from the past. And to be quite honest, you can't build a new world without honoring what happened in the past or else, you know, what they say, history don't repeat your rhymes. Oh, it's rhyming real hard right now. So like people need to pick up, you know, what happened in the past to understand, you know, today. Also important because any future that doesn't center youth will never prosper. And a lot of the violence that is used within society is used to remove people from their humanity. And you always have a right to challenge that.
01:24:21
Books, BBQ & Black History
and challenge that system. And I'm not just talking about like physical violence, of course, but like voting for human rights every two to four years is like wild, which is also for me, why I'm not interested in reforming a system because if someone can come, like someone could come in and undo like all the progress, like of my, you know, great, you know, great, great grandparents and sisters and all that, that's not a system I'm really interested in. so I'm again, very burned it all down, but you know, we'll we'll build something better later.
01:24:48
Books, BBQ & Black History
so yeah so i know this one was a little bit longer but this is the season one finale i cannot believe i have made it to eight episodes if you have found this podcast if you have you know made it this far i really appreciate you for listening anyone who has subscribed all the people who have supported i for sure will be back for season two i just need a little break but I'm really excited to have like created this space and, all the other things that we'll just continue to learn about. So of course, you know, keep listening to the episodes, follow me on Instagram, barbecue and black history, or I'm sorry, books, yeah, books, barbecue, black history. I will see you all, you know, very soon, but you know.
01:25:34
Books, BBQ & Black History
I need a little break. So, of course, like, comment, subscribe. And I hope you all continue learning with me. And I continue learning with you.