A world without police/prisons is not a world without conflict/violence. The difference between “ordinary” violence & carceral abuse is that the latter is violence done only to punish others just because you have the power to do so, with no regard for healing.

Sometimes, 2 people in conflict are both interested in healing but believe healing looks like different things. Sometimes, they’re equally powerless. Sometimes, people in conflict who are interested in healing tap into a desire to punish they don’t even know is there. Then what?

The answer depends. The answer takes work to figure out. Abolition is a practice, not a destination. Abolition is non-binary. The answer is not always one thing or the other. It changes with different people at different times in different communities.

Abolition is messy and beautiful and full of difficulties that can be overcame like any good life should be. Abolition is about allowing us to live good lives.

As I continue to do this work, I’m trying to always hold more space for the messy and beautiful and difficult than I did yesterday. To take more things out of the binary designations of completely good or completely bad.

Abolition also means giving myself room to experience harm & sadness and dislike without needing to tie it to abuse and oppression. Only by doing so can I play a role in conflicts or inevitably harm someone else in ways that aren’t necessarily tied to abuse and oppression either.

Also, this ain’t about Hella Black podcast. I don’t really know them niggas, the statement from the survivor seems to give quite a bit of space, and I believe @taylorcrumpton. It *is* about some conversations that were happening before that seem to have picked up steam since.