abolition is not an identity primarily (though it is useful sometimes to designate oneself as abolitionist). abolition, for me, is a practice. it means that we can fail at it. it means we can continue to cultivate our habits towards its becoming reflexive.

i think a lot about abolition because it is something i attempt to put into practice daily. not just with regard to policing and incarceration. but also, and fundamentally, in terms of my relationships.

i've stopped looking for innocence or to be innocent. i try to think about harm and how we can reduce it. and i try to think about how to repair breaches when harm has been done. harm interrupts our relationships.

but we can, when we commit to abolition as practice, repair. we can, when we commit to abolition as practice, seek understanding and perhaps even something akin to healing. (i'm agnostic but still a church boy. i think healing is important.)

abolition is not for me identity to claim bc we often claim identity to disallow critique. (see, also for example, "radical" as identity.)

so folks can say "i'm an abolitionist but some people belong in prison" or "but some people are too far gone to address harm in wholistic and reparative ways."

i don't believe that at all. and i want what i believe to be the way i attempt to inhabit the world.

i learn so much from black feminist abolitionism, that we can address harm, that we can seek otherwise, that we can practice alternatives, that it is urgent to practice alternatives now.

and i think abolition, as practice, teaches me that the time to do it is always now, abolition is performative, it only happens when you do it, and it's only done when it is difficult.

to commit to living alternatives, to commit to relationship as the grounds for thinking about harm and its reduction (which is not, to be sure, petty paternalism) ...

and to commit to the belief repair is possible, that care can sustain us, that we can live joyously, and then to live that belief is what abolition teaches me.

i strive for it, abolition. not as an individual but with others. it is necessarily a collective practice and project. no one can do it alone. abolition as practice draws us out of ourselves, pulls us into dense and life-altering relation with one another. this is a gift.

and i learn from abolition, as practice, that it's not about perfect, its not even seeking perfection (perfection is a ruse anyway). abolition allows us to recognize the fleshliness and messiness of our world and gives us a way to think about and attend to harm. but also joy.

abolition is also, and maybe even more urgently, the practice of joy.

the saints teach me (so yeah, i'm gonna always reference blackpentecostalism lol) that you can have joy in sorrow, that you can maintain hope for a better and otherwise tomorrow.

abolition is a joyful practice because it allows a cheerfulness of relation. this is not happiness about harm or violence. this joy is sustenance and resolve to commit to overcoming difficulty. this joy is the realization that we have so much, black abundance as kiese would say.

carceral logic and the many guises it takes is about making us feel bereft of relation, to make us feel isolated and alone.

and i believe in and try to organize my life around abolition as practice because i always want to try, i always want to make an attempt at, connection against that isolation and aloneness.

and perhaps when we enter into abolition as relational possibility, we then can also, maybe perhaps, bloom.

</rant>

[i don't like the unroll app so i blocked it. sorry, folks. but the thread is public, so you can share it if you'd like.]