What does abolition look like as a creative practice? Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us that “abolition is about presence… it is building life-affirming institutions.” In this light, frameworks of defunding the police and getting rid of prisons can explain only a part of the abolitionist process. Abolition sees prisons in hierarchies, punitiveness, and opportunism that brew distrust, disconnection, and injustice. Its creative practice cannot be encapsulated by making demands on government bodies that uphold whiteness, capitalism, and their carceral cultures - hence destruction of life.
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