Recording & Transcript: Addressing Gender-Based Violence Resource

text on image says Gender Based Violence Resource Launch Recording.

Event Details

Date: Tuesday 4th June 7pm-8:30pm [online] UTC/GMT

This event was the public launch of a new abolitionist resource on gender-based violence ‘Addressing Gender-Based Violence: Carceral Reforms vs Abolitionist Strategies’ developed by Abolitionist Futures in collaboration with frontline support workers, community organisers, and researchers.

Speakers

• Leah Cowan
  Leah is a writer and editor. Her second book, Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? was published in June 2024. Leah also works at Project 17, an advice centre for migrant families who have No Recourse to Public Funds and are facing homelessness and destitution.

• Lola Olufemi
  Lola is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective

• Billy
  Billy is a therapist, facilitator and trauma support worker based in Scotland. They work with LGBTQ+ people and survivors of sexual violence. Over the last few years, their focus has been creating spaces and resources that enable both survivors and support workers to re-define justice as something we can access for and by ourselves. They work independently, with gender based violence organisations, and with grassroots community groups.

Event format: Ali provided a brief introduction to the resource. Our speakers then shared their reflections on the resource in a round-table discussion format, followed by a Q&A discussion.

Video

Transcript

Mo 00:02

Great. So honestly, we're so excited to see everyone here, and excitement and registrations for this resource were absolutely fantastic. So my name is Mo, and I organize with Abolitionist Futures. And if you haven't come to one of our events before, we try our best to look as slick and organised as possible. But we are actually just run by people in our spare time, and it's totally unfunded, although where we can we will extract resources from institutions for running costs. And today, some of our co- conspirators have joined us from Newcastle University, and we're really delighted with that. And before I start, we also wanted to thank in particular, our designers who worked with us on the creation of the resource, which was pretty tricky at times. So Within & Against in particular, thank you so much if you're here or if you're looking back on the recording. So just to give you a sense of what to expect, after I do my little welcomes Ali will give us an overview of the resource creation and an introduction to the resource, who we are, why we made it, and what the resource entails, and what we hope it will do out in the world. I'll share my screen for some of this, just so you can see the resource itself while Ali is speaking. Then Ali will introduce our speakers and facilitate our round table. And we are so honored to have Lola Olafemi, Leah, Cohen and Billy here to discuss their reflections on the resource. Sothey will be talking for about 40 minutes, and then Molly, who has also been working on the resource, will facilitate our questions and answers. So if you'd like to ask your questions in the chat, please do. But if you'd like to, unmike yourself, you can also take that brave move and speak into the large zoom call. So we'll be doing the question and answers for about half an hour, hopefully, and then I will come back and just remind people of the discussion group and just to end the call. But before I hand over, we wanted to just highlight some things I'm sure you're aware the state of the world, so we don't need to highlight it. But if there is a lot going on….a lot needs to stop.

Ceasefire Now & Free Palestine.

We're currently going through an election in the United so called United Kingdom. So Tory is out, and as they say, here in the North of Ireland, Uppa Workers and Uppa Queers. But we particularly wanted to highlight that this topic affects most of us, some more than others. It's a sensitive one, and we at Abolitionist Futures usually try and approach these things assuming that most people have direct experience of violence and even attachments to the work that's gone on to end violence and gender based violence in particular, whether they're abolitionist or not. So we all have a lot of untangling to do, but during this call, we try and encourage you to be aware of your emotional landscape, your boundaries and your needs, particularly using online platforms, it is more difficult to feel connected online sometimes and in all of our collective work, we try and challenge all forms of bigotry, hate, discrimination, racism, transphobia, and we are living through a particular shit show right at the moment, with ableism and disrespect. But let's be honest, we don't always get it right. And here we try to work through the tricky things, and if you have to take a little break, or if you need to speak to someone in a breakout room we can facilitate that, this is a public event and will be recorded, as we said, but if you need to step away for your own needs or just to make your dinner, you can come back to it later and pick it up. So don't feel like you have to kind of sit through it all. So I'm going to hand over to Ali, and Ali is going to introduce the resource and our speakers, and I'll be back towards the end of the call. Thank you very much. Thanks, Ali.

Ali 04:13

Thanks so much, Mo and thanks everybody so much for coming. It's really lovely to see so many people here. So as you know, the resource has been developed by Abolitionist Futures in collaboration with frontline support workers, community organisers and researchers. I'm Ali Phipps. I'm a sexual violence researcher, and I was part of the team, so I've been asked to introduce the resource, and you'll see other people from the team later on in the event. So we basically wanted to make the resources a tool for discussion about ways to address gender based violence that don't rely on police and prisons. And we decided to create it because we saw a growing interest in abolition in this country after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and the case. Of Nicole Smallman, Bibaa Henry and Sarah Everard. And of course, abolition work has been going on here since the 1970s but abolition has recently come into the mainstream in a way that it wasn't before. In my own work, I've definitely noticed a shift in the questions I get when I talk about abolition, from, ‘don't be so bloody stupid’ to you know, okay, ‘how do we do this?’ And this resource is a way of approaching that question. And of course, that question is especially tricky when it comes to gender based and sexual violence, because when we try to introduce abolition, the response is so often, ‘what about the rapists?’ And our ideas about taking survivors seriously can be fused with the idea of punishment as opposed to accountability. It's very difficult to unfuse that. And even if we support the principle of abolition, it can be especially difficult to see practical steps of how do we do it? So we can understand in the abstract that police and prisons are harmful, but how do we practically divest from those systems when they're all around us and when they seem to symbolize safety for so many people? So the resource is not an answer. There's no easy answers, and in fact, it's organized around a series of questions. So for each strategy it covers it asks things like, does this reduce the scale of police power, or does this challenge the idea that police and prisons equal safety? These are the things we need to ask ourselves as we work towards abolition, step by step. So it's not about closing all the prisons tomorrow. It's about loosening that carceral grip on how we address harm always with our eyes on that horizon of a world where police and prisons are no longer necessary. So, the resource compares two things, what we've called carceral reforms and abolitionist strategies. Carceral reforms are ways of tackling gender based violence that do end up expanding the harms of the criminal legal system policing and incarceration in prisons and immigration detention centers and other things, and we've tried to explain why. And then, in contrast, abolitionist strategies take a more holistic approach and don't do harm in order to address harm. So we've listed a number of strategies that can tackle gender based violence while reducing the scope, scale and funding channeled into the criminal legal system without criminalising survival and while building community harm reduction and harm prevention skills. And this is not just talk, it's action, practical steps towards building collective safety and well being for all, rather than protecting some at the expense of others.

 If you've seen the resource already, then you'll know it has two parts. So there's a chart that compares carceral reforms and abolitionist strategies, and then there's a booklet that considers each strategy in more detail. And the booklet also has a key, so it shows which strategies focus on personal transformation, which on changing dominant institutions and which on building alternatives. So we really hope that you'll find it useful. And as I've said, it doesn't provide all the answers, but it can support conversations, and it's a practical tool. So when people say, ‘How do we do this?’ There's something to offer, and we've got some wonderful speakers here to reflect on the resource for and with us. So I'm going to introduce them now.

We'll do a more structured round table type discussion first, and then we'll open it up to the whole group for questions afterwards, feel free, as Tina said, to put questions in the chat while we're talking. So our first speaker is Leah. Leah Cowan, who is a writer and editor. Her second book, ‘Why would feminist trust the police?’ Will be published in June 2024 and it's brilliant. You should all buy it June 2024 that's now. I've just realized that's now. I just read it off the script, and, you know, didn’t even – is it out now? you can buy it now?  Oh my goodness, you can buy it now. You should go buy it now. It's fantastic book. And Leah also works at Project 17, which is an advice center for migrant families who have no recourse to public funds and are facing homelessness and destitution. We also have Lola, Lola Olufemi, who is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall Foundation researcher from London, based in the Center for Research and Education in art and media at the University of Westminster. Lola's work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. Lola's the author of Feminism, interrupted: disrupting power’, which was out in 2020 which is amazing, and ‘Experiments in imagine imagining otherwise’, which was out in 2021 and is also amazing. Lola is also a member of bare minimum which is an interdisciplinary, anti work Arts Collective. And then, last but not least, we have Billy, who is a therapist, facilitator and trauma support worker based in Scotland. They work with LGBTQ people and survivors of sexual violence. Over the last few years, Billy's focus has been on creating spaces and resources that enable both survivors and their supporters to redefine justice as something we can access for and by ourselves. They work independently with gender-based violence organisations and with grassroots community groups. So I'm really thrilled to have all of you with us. Thank you so much for your time. And to start with I think we wanted to just invite you to share your reflections on the resource and what you think of it. And can I start with you? Leah, please?

Leah  10:51

Thank you, Ali, for that introduction. I'm really pleased to be here today and to be speaking alongside Billy and Lola, so yes, thank you for having me along. I wanted to start with a question posed by Incite! which is a US based anti violence activist organisation that we reference in the booklet, because, as Ali said, I was involved in in the creation of the resource. And the slightly paraphrased quote is, the question is not, should we call the police. The questions are, why is that our only option? And can we provide other options that will keep us truly safe? And I think what the Resource offers to the people that I'm working with specifically so that's people from migrant communities, some of whom are undocumented, all of whom have no recourse to public funds, is a more robust approach to harm reduction and violence reduction that is not just about a response after the fact, but is about prevention. is about care and healing and justice for everybody in all of the forms that might take. And I just wanted to touch on a few examples of why calling on the state to address gender-based violence doesn't really work, and why this resource is therefore so important in offering practical strategies that that do work. So we know that the police work in partnership with border enforcement, and they share data with the home office, so calling the police or reporting to the police can have really catastrophic impacts on a person's life. It could lead to immigration enforcement action, even if charges are dropped or no further action is taken. And we also know that there's a pipeline between prisons and immigration detention centers, so the 2007 Borders Act means that the state can automatically make a decision to deport somebody who isn't a British citizen if they're given a 12 month prison sentence. So what that means is if someone receives a prison sentence, and prison sentences is something that a lot of campaigning has been done around in the gender based violence sector, that can lead to them automatically being deported, which then entrenches cycles of harm and poverty for that person, as well as for their family members and community members who are either left behind in the UK or may have been living elsewhere and be dependent on that person's income from their job in the UK, and kind of Thirdly, we know that one of the key strategies of the border regime is to make people's lives here unlivable. There's this ongoing attempt to create a hostile environment for racialized and migrant communities in the UK, and this is a kind of web of laws and policies that basically pushes people into poverty, into situations of labor exploitation and into situations of harm, where people are particularly vulnerable to gender based violence and have no way to escape that situation through gaining, for example, financial independence, safe accommodation, etc, because all of those safety nets are stripped away by the hostile environment. So the idea that one arm of the state, the criminal legal system, would be interested in supporting people facing gender based violence when at the same time another arm of the state, the Home Office, has stripped away or blocked that person's ability to simply buy food have a safe bed to sleep in. This isn't an idea that makes sense. We know that it's not effective to place our trust in the state to reduce harm when the state has been very clear and playing about its intention to produce harm for migrant communities. So I think this resource poses some really important strategies for addressing gender based violence in a way that is practical and linked to kind of real life experiences as well.

Ali 14:49

Thanks so much, Leah, and thanks for that really tangible example as well. I think that's really important. Lola, can I come to you next, just for your general thoughts about the resource?

Lola  14:58

Absolutely. Um. I want to say also a huge thank you to the Abolitionist Futures team for the resource and also for inviting me to speak alongside Leah and Billy. I guess I wanted to I wanted to start with thinking about the urgency and necessity of a resource like this, especially in the context that we find ourselves in, which is, you know, almost like two decades into an austerity regime that has killed continues to leave people in absolute poverty, continues to leave people absolutely destitute. Also, another kind of dimension of that necessary context is thinking about gender based violence, thinking just just the other day, actually, I was, I was looking at some of some stats that Black Lives Matter had collected about reported instances of femicide in 2023 and how out of 13 reported incident incidences of femicide, sorry, eight of those include black eight of those people were black women. And I think that it's important to take into account how this resource talks not only about gender based violence, but also talks about the disproportionate impacts that gender based violence, or carceral solutions to gender based violence, has for those who are racialized, has for sex workers or for those who belong to the queer community, people who are disabled, etc. So we can't really think about gender based violence without thinking about other forms of carceral violence, without thinking about the border, how it demarcates who belongs and who doesn't, without thinking about the prison, without thinking about how, in times of crisis, States essentially elect to kind of shift their responsibility to provide food, education, health care and other resources onto kind of corporations and private bodies, essentially abandoning populations, right? and then using carceral solutions to consolidate their power, right? So when people, as has been said before, don't have access to housing, education, etc, and they commit quote, unquote, a crime, the state is then able to reaffirm and reinforce its remit by, you know, designating some people criminal and others not. I think another thing that this report does really well is take seriously the way that the state mobilizes gender and specifically anxieties about violence, which we all share right? in order to provide the illusion of protection. I think it really strips back this idea that one we keep each other safe, and we always have, and we always will, but also that in our communities, we actually possess a lot more resources to quote, unquote, protect each other, to heal cycles of trauma, etc, than outside bodies, which I think is something that In a political landscape that is intent on dispossessing individuals and siphoning us off and kind of alienating us from one another, is really important to remember. I'll just say two quick more things. I think this work also emerges as Ali kind of already said, out of the legacy of rebellion, riots and protests that that have emerged around forms of state violence from about 2013 so it's it's important for us to contextualize that this, the kind of interest in abolition emerges from a place where, you know, in 2013 2016 people were making demands around state violence, And the state was saying, we can redress this through reform. And actually, we find ourselves in a historical cycle where now we see the failure of the reforms enacted in 2013 in 2016 et cetera, and we're living in that aftermath. So abolition provides us a new kind of avenue for thinking about this particular conjuncture that we find ourselves in right now. And the last thing I'll say is I've kind of when, when talking about abolition. One thing that came up for me when I was reading this is this resources, emphasis on the need for resource or the need for things like mutual aid, forms of community and community intervention that don't involve the police, for example, how that is really filling the gap between what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls like organized violence and organized abandonment? So we have a situation in which, as a population, we we've been essentially abandoned by the state, right? And actually, what a lot of the proposals in the in the resource do really well is show us that okay, if we cannot get housing, if we cannot get resources from the state, then we have to find ways to support one another through our experiences of poverty, through our experiences of the border, of detention, etc, and so, yeah, there's a real effort, sorry, emphasis on kind of solidaristic action, and that's really important, because abolition is a lifelong project. So I'll kind of end there.

Ali 20:14

Thanks. Lola, absolutely right. And I think that that more expansive concept of violence that you talked about and that politicisation of protection are two of the themes that really underpinned a lot of our discussions as the group. So thank you so much, Billy. I'll come to you now.

Billy  20:34

yeah, like Leo and Lola. I just want to say thank you for the resource, and also thank you for inviting me to speak. Yeah, I'm excited for the conversation we're beginning to have.

I suppose I'm coming at this as someone who's worked in a variety of settings, each with different levels of opposition and complicity with carceral state systems. Like a lot of the services that I've worked in, the predominantly been like rape crisis services, which are deeply carceral reformist in their history, in their present politics. And so while I've done some like grassroots work, and I've done work that opposes the violence of borders and prisons, I've also spent a lot of time doing work that this resource will rightly tell you is reformist in its aims and in its outcomes. And so when I'm looking at this resource, what I'm thinking about is like the conversations that I hear in those spaces, the resistance and the kind of stuckness in gender based violence services, and actually how useful this is in pushing those conversations. I guess I feel committed to both imagining what we can do outside of the services that we have, but there is some degree to which I feel like I also find myself committed to trying to create change with what we have. I want to do both things. And I guess that's like when I think about support workers. And I think about like the sector trauma support workers, frontline workers are are the people, whether they describe themselves as critical of prisons and police or carceral systems or not, they are people who will be able to tell you and describe really accurately the harm and violence of the criminal justice system, because we're seeing it again and again, even when we're working in services that serve the very narrow population that the criminal justice system is designed to serve, we're still seeing the damage and the violence that the criminal justice system does to them, but also to the people that have harmed them. And so I guess, I noticed this kind of stuckness in the commitment to Criminal Justice and carceral feminism in the in these spaces, and the limits in the imagination about what could be done differently. And that's strange when you when you couple, when you put that alongside the experience that you have of just seeing how how much it doesn't work, even for the people that it's supposed to work for, and then still this commitment to it, this really deep, deep commitment to it. And I think that's what's powerful about this tool, is that it, I guess, in the spaces that I work in, abolition is often dismissed as something that's like an imaginative, Idealist project. But I think that the way that this tool lays out the fact that there are things that we're already doing, we don't need to necessarily come up with new alternatives. There are already things that either we're doing or communities have to do, like when Leah's talking about the ways that communities who are excluded from criminal justice system, who are themselves criminalized by the criminal justice system. Those are the places that we can look to for alternatives, for ways to work, ways to take care of each other, because people have been doing it for a long time, since before the criminal justice system. And I think that's what this resource makes really clear, is that there are lots of things that we're already doing that we just need to do more of in order to progress abolitionist aims. So it feels constructive as well as critical, like very practical, clear, but also affirming of the good work that's that's already happening in community and and in some support services. I guess I can see that being helpful in building like motivation rather than depletion. You know about, like, I think about like, tired support workers that are like struggling to imagine how to do things differently. This feels like motivating. It feels energizing and supportive in the alternatives that it like that. Uh, details, I guess, um, yeah, I guess, like, just one, um, one thing that it made me reflect on. It reminded me about one of my clients who I worked with for a number of years. They was someone who went through the criminal justice process and at the end of it, they, like most people I work with in that role felt that the system even the conviction that it resulted then in that it gave them nothing, changed nothing, and had taken too much from them and also too much from the person that had harmed them. They told me that what they learned was that the system itself is a distraction, that the system had distracted them from their own healing, from continuing to live, from continuing to move on. And I think that's true of support services too, and this resource is really good at making that clear that gender based violence support services are very successfully distracted and co opted by criminal justice systems like taken away from doing the real healing and justice work that's needed and that the state would prefer us not to do. Yeah.

Ali 26:11

Thank you so much, Billy. And I think that when you said the different levels of opposition to and complicity with carceral systems, I think some people on the call will probably feel very seen by that, and it's really important to acknowledge that. And I think that this, that stuckness in GBV services, is something that we were very aware of, and it's something Molly writes about, and it's something that we want to help with through the resource. And I love what you say about building motivation rather than depletion. I think that's such a powerful framing. I mean, the first question really is kind of following on from what you said, Billy, which is about, you know, some of the challenges of divesting from the police and prison system, and then the possibilities of divesting from the police and prison system based on the work that you've done. I don't know whether you want, you want to share anything more on that, Billy, or whether we should go to Leah or Lola up to you when you've you've kind of answered that already, I think. But is there anything more that you want to say?

Bill  27:18

I guess, I suppose it's just good to acknowledge how successful, and I think this resource does how successful the criminal justice system is in weaving itself into so many other systems of support, like it's hugely coercive, and it's hugely embedded in many of the essential services that we want to connect survivors with so there are lots of situations that are detailed in the report, some of which are like mandatory reporting, like the pressure on workers to essentially police our clients. But also like thinking about like child contact systems, the way that like Social Work operates as a kind of secondary wing of police, so that if somebody wants to get more space, or put space between them and an abusive co parent or somebody who's found them and their children, how, how it can be essential to have engaged with police or criminal justice or these systems is actually not possible for some people to get that space where it feels not possible without reporting or engaging systems, and like, same with people who are most at risk, you know, like people who are maybe at risk of domestic homicide, that often triggers, like multi agency processes. So in order to like engage emergency housing, you also then automatically engaged with police and social work. And all of these systems know about you, but they also know about the person who who has caused you harm. And so I guess changing the relation to police or it also involves changing a relation to all of these state services. Yeah.

Ali 29:12

Yeah, it's a powerful web, isn't it? Can I Lola, I see you've unmuted. Can I come to you next? Yeah,

Lola  29:20

I kind of wanted to, like, continue and kind of respond to what Billy had said. There's something I've been thinking about quite a lot, which is like when we're talking about environments in which police power is deeply embedded into our system, into our pre existing institutional systems that we might use to help people when they have experienced gender based violence. I think we also have to think about how we're in a social landscape where often, when we do try to make interventions, or as feminists or as people who care about those in prison, we can fall into a trap of making these kind of like proto abolitionist arguments, to say, you know, on the basis of gender, to say, you know, pregnant women don't deserve to be in prison, or a specific subsection of people don't deserve to be in prison. And there's a there's a real The reason why I say it's something I think about a lot is because that is meaningful and worthwhile work, especially in the context that we find ourselves in in the UK, but it also, I think, pushes us back into a trap of of having to make an argument about a threshold of deservingness to a public that is just learning about abolitionist, about abolition. And so I think another thing that's difficult about trying to entangle the our pre existing systems, also from police, is that, but also how the violence of co-optation from police but also from the general public is also, is always there, right? If we feel like, as abolitionists, we have to make the most publicly accessible, persuasive argument. Then, then we do something to the to some of the kernels of like, the thinking that abolition gives us about how we approach prisons, how we approach policing, and how we speak about people in prison. I don't know whether people have thoughts on on that, but it's something that I think, especially in the context of the Violence Against Women sector that we see constantly alongside calls for the, you know, criminal the further criminalisation of like, specific acts through hate crime legislation, etc, etc.

Ali 31:33

Absolutely. Leah, do you want to come in now? Yeah,

Leah  31:37

I think kind of jumping on that point, I wanted to reflect on the way that abolition kind of pivots away from this obsession with punishment and with criminalization, as Lola has said, and why that pivot matters so much. And I wanted to give a bit of an example from my work. So I've worked with almost 200 different families of no recourse to public funds over the past few years, and some of the common threads that I've discussed with these families is not that they want more interactions with police or more prison sentences for the institutions or the people that have harmed them, but they the main things they talk about is they kind of need somewhere to live and they need money to buy food. These are the kind of recurrent demands that people have, the current needs that people have, and these are urgent needs. And that makes sense, because in many cases, people's experiences of gender based violence are directly linked to the deprivation of these things. So money, safe housing, comfortable housing, and in many cases, people are afraid because they might be living in a violent situation and they can't leave, or they might have left and they're sleeping on a friend's sofa, or sleeping on busses or park benches, or sitting in McDonald's overnight with children and walking the streets whilst children are at school. They might not be able to work, so perhaps someone's undocumented and they're not able to buy, you know, food for themselves or their family, or they are working unlawfully, working without permission, as the state says, and they're being controlled by an employer or a partner with threats that they will inform the home office if that person doesn't kind of comply with them in some way. And in many of these cases, people you know choose not to report to the police because the risk of an immigration enforcement is too high. In some cases, people have reported to the police and nothing has happened and or the violence has escalated by police intervention. So I think I kind of sketched out some of those scenarios to point to the ways in which rejecting a carceral approach to gender based violence, and instead focusing on what survivors need in the here and now, kind of material needs as fundamental to care, healing and justice, I think, are quite clear and listed in the resource, I think in the booklet, it's abolitionist strategies. 10 and 11 right at the end are housing for all and building long term economic justice. And I think it's important to center these as vital harm reduction objectives that have a direct link to reducing gender based violence, not just thinking about gender based violence as a kind of spontaneous occurrence, but thinking about the site where violence can be compounded, and how vulnerability is manufactured and produced by the border regime, by the state, and considering carefully where exploitation and control can happen and how we address that. And it's through that abolitionist, you know, pivot away from punishment and criminalisation and towards the kind of simple question of, what do people need

Ali 34:48

That’s so good. Leah, you're kind of introducing my next question. Really, you're doing my job for me. So I'm really kind of struck by these very tangible examples that you're providing which are so useful and they also really fly in the face of that common objection to abolitionist thinking, which is that it's too utopian, it's not practical enough. And I think you've already partially responded to this through what you've said. But is there anything else that you'd like to say in response to that? And I don't know whether you want to carry on Leah or whether Billy or Lola. You want to take this one first?

Leah  35:30

Yeah, happy to kind of jump in. I mean, I think it'ss as I said in my previous answer. I see abolitionist work as incredibly pragmatic in that it addresses the root causes of harm. It builds strategies from a place that tries to reduce these causes rather than kind of papering over the symptoms at the same time. And you know, Lola's work is the really great example of this abolitionist thinking requires us to expand our imaginations, to utilise our ideas, our needs, our hopes, our desires and our dreams as a kind of source and a resource for that practical action, which I think is very different to kind of utopian pie in the sky at the same time I see carceral responses to violence, so whether that's, you know, police, prisons, immigration, detention centers, deportation or all of that kind of infrastructure based in not only quite a confected fantasy of what harm is, but also of what justice is. So on one hand, we can see that, you know, the criminal legal system cherry picks what types of harms it is bothered about. So it's not that fussed about prosecuting states or companies that push people into poverty. It's not that bothered about, you know, people on banks that cause financial crashes. It's not that fussed about states and, you know, transnational alliances that massacre people in wars and genocides. And you know, we've particularly mentioned Palestine right at the beginning today, at the same time, it promotes a very kind of punishment forward Law and Order response as the only way to solve in quote marks, this specific handful of harms that it seems to be bothered about. On the other hand, there's another layer of fantasy in the kind of carceral response to gender based violence, in that you know, the criminal legal system isn't very good at solving the things that it allegedly claims to solve. Many of us on this call will be very familiar with, you know, low rates of prosecutions around things like rape, female genital mutilation and modern slavery, which is actually just kind of more border enforcement in disguise. And to be clear, I'm not saying that these low rates of prosecutions need to be improved, but I think it's quite useful to point to the fact that carceral approaches to gender based violence don't actually do the thing that they claim to be doing. It's the least practical thing ever. The idea of these carceral responses actually solving the issue, that is the fantasy. We can see in reality that it doesn't work.

Ali 38:05

Thanks. Leah, I think that is such a powerful thing. Where is the fantasy actually located? Is such a good response. Billy, do you want to come in now?

Billy  38:14

Yeah, I guess there's I like that the theme of like, kind of like, illusion and then deception of the criminal justice system is coming up a lot. I think, like, nothing is more impractical, idealistic or like illusory, than the criminal justice system itself. It's like, I think I recently found out that the new prison that HMP Glasgow, which is going to replace Barlinnie, a very old prison in Glasgow, is currently under construction. And I found out recently that that's going to cost 400 million pounds to build that single prison. And I guess it just, and I think about like, practicality, you just think about like, that sum of money and how, how that's going to increase social harm is going to increase? Necessarily increase gender based violence, sexual violence, or clients of harm, um, rather than to go anyway to solving like social problems like homelessness or wealth disparity or addictions, um, or gender based violence in the community. And you just think about what you could spend 400 million pounds on, like, if we were to look in this resource and look at the suggestions for like, abolitionist strategies. And just think how many of those things could be achieved, like, thinking about a city like Glasgow, or how many homes could be built with 400 million pounds. It's like, that's what's it practical? Um, yeah, yeah, that's it feels clear to me when I think about the money specifically,

Ali 39:49

Absolutely and Lola, to you, I mean, you write about the imagination, but your work is definitely not pie in the sky. So I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about this.

Lola  39:59

I think, um. Yeah, I think this is a really interesting question. And when I was thinking about this question, I was thinking about how I think in like 2020 I read something from somebody who runs a women's service. Basically, it was kind of this op ed about how abolition is a pie in the sky thing, and it will never happen. And I was kind of rereading it, and actually what she says in it, what I found so interesting was that, you know, I'm, I'm sympathetic to the arguments that abolition makes, but none of this will happen unless capitalism ends. And I was like, yeah. Like, absolutely, that's I find it interesting that in the critique of abolition, there was some recognition there, not only about like, you know, the extent of police violence, but also this idea that you can't become an abolitionist. You can't become a student of abolition without ultimately understanding how the lack of resource or the way, or this idea of elective precarity, the way the state produces precarity, is also intimately connected to flows of money, flows of capital, the way society is organized around labor exploitation. And those are really important connections to make. And obviously, a lot of people come to abolition without thinking through that first, obviously, for lots of different reasons, but I think the second that you begin to ask the question that Leah said earlier, ‘what do people need?’ And then you begin to assess why in your local area, for example, people don't have the things that you need. Then you understand the role of privatisation. You understand the role of corporations really guzzling up housing, for example, buying huge plots of land to build houses for extortionate rates that nobody will be able to live in, etc. And you see how those cycles are connected to capitalism. I think it's important to remember, when we encounter this question of utopianism that, like abolition is one facet of a radical political genealogy that wants to change every single thing. And so in some ways, rather than running away from the from the charge of like you want to do so much, I think we say it's precisely because we care about everybody that we are adding so much complexity in thinking about this question of what do people need, and also that we make this argument that we live in a world where we actually have enough resource for all right, but what capitalism does is create a false sense of scarcity, which also gets in the way of the solidaristic actions that we might, we might take in our local communities, right? Because you're thinking, What's mine is mine, and every other person is either out to harm me or take the things that I have. And so on a kind of, like personal level, I feel like abolition gives us a way of thinking through that. I think, yeah, the project as people who have and hopefully people on this call who are committing yourselves to thinking about how to reorganize the social world, which is a lifelong project. There's no straightforward solution to that, and there is no answer to that, right? You just have to struggle, you have to fight. You have to make interventions where you can. And so, yeah, the charge of, like, wanting things to be better, I think should be worn, actually, as a badge to say, yes, I would like the world to be better than it than it currently is. That's not, that's never an insult I think.

Ali 43:30

Absolutely Amen to that. And you're so right. It's not about scarcity, it's about distribution. And when you understand that, then suddenly abolition thinking doesn't seem quite so utopian, as you've said, it's political economy, isn't it? So I have one more question to ask you before we open to the group. Just really briefly, in the last five minutes, we just wanted to ask you how you think you might use the resource in your own work or in your own community or in your own thinking. And I don't mind who wants to go first. Do you want to go? Leah,

Leah  44:1 2

Yeah, I'm happy to jump in. Yeah. I guess two kind of quick ways. I work in the charity sector, so I will be, you know, sharing it with colleagues, particularly those working in like a policy campaigning space, to make sure that when arguments are being made around, you know what, what needs to happen, that we're not calling for new forms of criminalisation, that when we're calling on the state to kind of do anything, we're basically asking them to undo all of the harm and the rubbish and the legislation that they've created that makes people's lives hard. The second point, kind of thinking about the different forms of harm reduction, the resource offers, and the real emphasis on prevention, I think, is really important for me. So when I'm working with survivors or people who are undocumented and, you know, in a space where they're experiencing state violence, I'm constantly thinking about, what are the things that can increase safety in the context of the way the state and the border regime vulnerabilise people? And I think the results on the booklet expand on the strategy of mutual aid and community support. And I think it's really useful to think about how isolation compounds violence, and how could linking people up to community groups, peer support groups, you know, parent and baby groups, faith based groups, help that person to build their support network in a way that doesn't leave them totally isolated without any help or support, whether that's you know, emotional or material support, and therefore more vulnerable to violence and exploitation. So yeah, thinking about that rich tapestry of prevention and the way that we can reduce violence in that respect.

Ali 45:55

Thanks so much. Leah, who wants to go next?

Lola  46:01

Yeah, I'm happy to go next. I think I have. I think what I mean for me, what immediately came to mind is giving this resource to my friends who are social workers, who think of social work as like an inherently benevolent task and activity, especially because that is also another institution or another area that is intimately tied up with the police and another way that the state makes things like housing, things like education, things like healthcare, intimately tied up with policing, how they make health practitioners, for example, mini police officers and social workers, mini police officers. So I think for me, this resource will be really useful in to give to people who work in those areas, to be able to help challenge the assumption of benevolence and to help them identify the ways actually, that their work is intimately tied up with carcerality, and how they might be able to, as individuals, as part of the Union, actually do a bit of that unpicking. I also think that the what I love about this resource is that I also feel like I could share it with people to just begin a conversation and to start a conversation. I always, you know, get on the train and see this, like, advert from HSBC, which is about, like, you know, if you're experiencing financial abuse, you can, like, let us know. And I think I always want to, like, you know, start a conversation with the person that I'm with that that basically starts with the question, you know, why is a bank offering this? Why isn't this something that people are able to find in their local community? And I think that this resource helps in kind of expanding our understandings of what counts as support, what counts as safety, but also, yeah, it goes a long way in answering the question of like, why a corporation is offering this service, rather than, you know, the state, which wants to affirm kind of police power, yeah. And I think lastly, I'll say that what I really loved, also in reading this resource, was one thing that it said, which is, like to end violence, we need something like to end violence we need everybody. And I think that that is such a kind of call to action. It's like everybody has their role, but we need everybody to take part, right? And I think it's, it's, I see it as part of a long history of groups like the Haringey Black Women's Center, OAD, you know, Brixton black women's group, who provided forms of political education to local communities as a means of mobilization, as a way to say, okay, how do we begin to provide each other with the resources that we need? Right? It's a good starting point for creating those networks that help survival, essentially. So those are all of the ways that I will be encouraging other people to use it and using it myself.

Ali 49:01

Thanks so much. Lola and Billy, would you like to round us up?

Billy  49:08

Yeah, I guess, yeah, a few things like, I guess I find it like a really useful kind of navigational tool, like a thing to come back to, to kind of anchor into, like, I guess holding on to, like an abolitionist direction, particularly when I work in a situation that can be very disorienting in the kind of, like carceral logic, logics that are around a lot of the time. So there's something helpful about it, something to come back to, to kind of check your motivation, check what you're doing, check where you're directing your energy, your care, your skills, your labour. And I guess I imagine using it too in in the places that I work in, and the charities and services that I work in, to try and build like pressure, build collective pressure towards like divestment from criminal justice, of redirection of resources, I think there are limits to how far I think that can go in the in the gender based violence sector right now, but I'd certainly think there are like ways that we can focus on some of these abolitionist strategies more than the carceral reforms that are listed here. But I guess maybe when I just think about like, the work that I do with survivors, this thing about focusing on what you're already doing, on the like in the abolitionist work and the transformative work that is already happening, I think that kind of rhymes with like a way that I find the most useful to work with survivors too, is like survivors who are reaching for the criminal justice system is because they want to do something. They want to do something about, like, violence that's happened to them, harm that's happened to them. And actually, like as workers, I think it's so it's most important that we like dispel the illusions of the criminal justice system as something that is going to meet that desire, that is going to actually meet those needs that they have, because that's highly unlikely, as we know, but also to like support them, to focus on what they're already doing, on like finding a sense of agency, on finding a sense of like, ways in which they're bringing about justice for themselves, for each other, how they might do that in their community, like there's something about how this resource does that for us as people who are interested in, like, furthering abolitionist aims, that I think is also really important in working therapeutically with survivors in helping them see that they're already enacting a sense of justice in their own lives. They're already surviving. They're already living through really difficult experiences. They're already meeting the needs that they want, that they might want the criminal justice system to meet.

Ali 52:00

Thank you so much all of you for some really fantastic thoughts and the chat, there's been so much going on in the chat. There's a lot of questions coming, so I will hand over now to Molly, who will ask you some of the questions that have come from the group. But thank you. That was great.

Molly  52:19

Yeah. Thank you. My head is abuzz with thoughts. I have my own questions, but I will restrain myself and kind of paraphrase back some of the questions that we've had from people. I'm going to kind of block them together. And also, if anyone would like to verbally ask a question, do please just pop your hand up and I will come to you in a second, but I think one of the questions is a kind of around resistance. And all of you spoke kind of about the kind of ways in which the criminal legal system and kind of carceral systems and structures and logics they really weave their way into our lives. And some of the questions that we've had from people in the chat were kind of about this. So Tom asked a question about the kind of carceral role of social services. And Ali asked a question about how the state kind of frequently co ops, radical language around things like transformational justice, kind of making it less about accountability and more about kind of other other carceral violences. And I wonder if, if any of you could, could speak about what it looks like in practice to resist either those specific kind of practices or kind of any, any kind of resistance in your in your life, and kind of all the one navigating how kind of exhausting and demoralizing that can be kind of like, how we, how do we resist, but resist in a way that is infused with care for ourselves and others, kind of, yeah, even to the very minutia of how we have kind of really difficult conversations with people in services.

Billy  53:54

And I can certainly speak to it in terms of, like contact with police and like seeing the way that police are extremely successful in absorbing language, absorbing ideas like police will very commonly dismiss like abusive or harmful behavior. You know, like all of their behavior is abusive and harmful, but I'm talking about that it's been like, specific instances where they've, like, really caused harm to, like, someone that I've been working with, and they will, they will describe that as like, an officer who is who's experiencing burnout, or an officer who is, like, basically suffering because of exerting violence. Like, there's not there's that they've taken a language that's about like, being close to the effects of violence, and they're not making a distinction between the difference between, like, yes, it exerts a cost on you as a human being to be enacting violence in the world. There is a cost of that, but it's not what we're talking about when we talk about burnout or vicarious trauma or like compassion fatigue, but all of these languages that are about like or just being traumatised, like being traumatised and feeling the effects of enacting violence in the world are. They're not necessarily totally separate, but they're different experiences.

Molly  55:31

Thank you, Billy, I don't know Leo or Lola, if you would like to respond. Lola, I can see you've unmuted.

Lola 55:36

Yeah. I think,I think this is a tricky one, because I do think that we are in it in an age where we're really used to seeing institutions and policing bodies and other carceral bodies just really use the language that they have deemed popular on like Twitter and other sites. And it's like, very disorientating, but I do think it's worth, like, staking a claim for our language, and I think the way that we do that is to historicize it, and also to define our terms properly, right? Like, so it's important, like, by historicize that I mean historicize the role of violence in the history of policing, right? Call things, what they are. So this resource does a really good job of defining, you know, the criminal legal system against the criminal justice system, for example. That's just like one very small example. But I think that trying to find ways of thinking about the history and function of the police, of the police in this country that centralise its violence, right? So that we don't find ourselves in a situation where we are comparing where like real police violence happens in America or in other countries, and not in the UK, understanding actually how the lives of racialized people in this country have always been intimately tied with the violence of policing is one way. And I think also like by what I mean by, I guess, like defining our terms is, especially as feminists, especially as people who work in the in the Violence Against Women sector, it's important when a body that you know enables one of its officers to go and murder somebody, right, and then uses the language of bad apples that we have a real robust like lexicon to oppose that to say, this is what we mean when we say solidarity or gender or any of these terms, right, and this is what we mean when we say that bad apples can't possibly exist. I think we're also in a context where a lot of in terms of the public perception of the police more so than I would say, five or 10 years ago, it has really been eroded by extreme kind of instances of violence, which is why we are seeing such a rise in in policing PR, right. So, in a way that that alerts us to the fact that we are in an interesting space in terms of what we can do, in terms of political education, in terms of challenging the normative power of policing, especially through language. That's only one avenue, but I do think language matters in this context, or else you end up not being able to know who is on your side, right, because the police are saying burnout, and you're also saying burnout, so it doesn't really, you know, make sense?

Molly  58:38

Yeah, absolutely. And like these terms. These terms really matter. And I think something that the resource tries and tries to do a little bit is to help us kind of be really specific about some of those terms as well. Leah.

Leah  58:51

yeah, I just wanted to touch on the point about the kind of carceral role of social services, which I could bang on about forever, but I will try not to. Social services have very much become about gatekeeping resources from a position of scarcity in a context of austerity. And lots of people I work with have had really horrific experiences of social workers. I think it's also when we're thinking about how to kind of communicate this resource to people is useful to recognise that this conflicted scarcity that local authorities are working on the basis of is truly felt by the workers, by social workers, who are experiencing pressures, by managers. They're overstretched. They're not being resourced in a way that would enable them to support families, even if that's what the state wanted them to do, right? So, you know, there are also cultures of disbelief and classism and racism and ableism baked into these institutions. And you know, in the context of the hostile environment, social services sometimes have embedded immigration officers they have embedded fraud departments where if a family with no recourse to public funds are seeking support, they will be investigated to make sure they're not making a ‘fraudulent claim’ for support, you know, hiding income or something like that. And I worked with somebody where a social worker was refusing a family support because they had an expensive pram, which it turned out, had been gifted to them, and they had a bottle of perfume in their bedroom, which the social worker said was, you know, a luxury item. And therefore, how could the family be destitute? So kind of in that context, I think it's quite useful to think about, how do we how are we going to communicate this resource to those social workers, working under those pressures working in those structures where these are the attitudes and ideas that are very pervasive. I think there's a way that, if you're a frontline worker having direct communication with people in these institutions, we can think about challenging language on a very kind of one-to-one basis. So you know, conversations where social workers are talking about people being illegal, you know, pushing back against that and reframing and suggesting alternative language. And you know why that language doesn't make sense, pushing back against attitudes that social workers are displaying that maybe are, you know, coming from the structures they're working within. So, yeah, I've heard a lot of social workers suggesting that people should go back to where they came from, this very kind of overtly racist language, and it's important to challenge that, and then kind of thinking about what practices can be shared and improved. And specifically on the point of social workers, I think there's a group called ‘social workers without borders’, who are doing quite a lot of good stuff around challenging those attitudes and, you know, language and practices within the institution. So, yeah, that's just a couple of thoughts on social services specifically,

Molly  1:01:55

thank you. And that that point around kind of the importance of challenging, I think, is also also connected to how we challenge within the services that we're based within as well. And we had a question, a few questions about kind of focus and where we begin. And one of the questions in particular was around kind of how we bring this into the frontline services directly, like, what do we do? Where should we begin? And does, what does that mean when, kind of, maybe the organisation won't go in that direction, and does that mean that we leave people without support?

Leah 1:02:33

It's a really big question. Could you say the question again, Molly, is that all right? Yeah, absolutely. So it was just a

Molly  1:02:40

question of, obviously, we're speaking about resist. Speaking about resistance, and how we kind of do this might kind of, kind of broader resistance, but also kind of resistance when we're in something like social services. And then we've also had questions about kind of focus. So where should we focus? Should we be focusing kind of in services, and if we're working within services, what do we do? How do we bring about these changes when the organisation itself is resistant? I think the person I'm speaking to is kind of asked a question about, kind of, as a GBV worker, what does that mean for kind of the survivors that we're supporting or maybe not going to support if we make the decision to kind of enact this, this resistance and services, i

Billy  1:03:23

Yes, yeah, I guess I have an amount of empathy with that question. That is, I think working in this position of complexity and complicity, it's is really challenging, but I, I guess I find that I spend time thinking about how I can use the space that I have, or the space I have with survivors in the space and funding that happen in in organisations, to even just in my in my interactions with my clients, to think about like, how am I bringing a kind of like truth, like a truthful, like abolitionist perspective, to what I'm doing in this, in this one relationship, right? Like, I think, I guess, like bell hooks that talks about, like justice as truth telling, that it's about like seeing the world and ourselves as it is not how we'd like it to be, not how we need it to be, but actually being really, really honest about how it is. And I think that I think about that often in terms of gender-based violence services, because there's so many myths and so many illusions like this binary thing between like, I mean, and it's what gender based violence services have been selling too. We reaffirm it when we say, like, the options are, like, report to the police or do nothing. And that isn't true. Like that isn't those aren't the options. And so I guess, to be like, responsible and accountable to this politics in that position where someone is coming to you saying, I want to report. Is our responsibility to like, work with them to find out why? Like, do you want to do that? Because you think that's the only option available to you when you say you want to do that. Do you actually know what it's going to be like when you do? what are you hoping to get out of that? Is that even something the criminal justice system is going to offer you, and at what cost? like, we need to be thinking about informed choice, and so like informing people about the truth and the reality of the systems that they're about to engage, and thinking about it from all perspectives too, right? Because the survivors I work with, they care about what happens to the person that harmed them. They want to know that something meaningful is going to happen, or that change is going to happen, or that, like, it will be for something like transformative, that is usually what people want. And so actually understanding that that isn't what's going to come about, that is helping someone to make an informed choice. Because if you're not informing them of that who's informing them of that? It's going to be the state, society saying that, you know, we know that those the way that criminal justice is sold is an illusion. It's deceptive. So I think, I guess I think about it in that way. I think about my responsibility to inform, to use my expertise and my perspective on how much of the system I've seen to help people understand what it will, and it won't give you. And I guess, I guess I find that, yeah, yeah …I guess I just find this really important, particularly when you're recognising that the people who are often being reported are like close people, the reality is that often family members, friends, like people in your life, they're not strangers, they're not people that you don't care about. There's like this complex working with people in in navigating how they want to secure safety for themselves, or whatever it is they're hoping to get from the criminal justice system, and their likelihood is that they're probably not going to get it

Molly  1:07:09

Thank you so much, Billy, for such a beautiful reflection. And I think when you were speaking, I was also thinking about like, how the kind of carceral systems and structures that we have, they don't give space for any of that complexity of the like, manifold of relationships that so many of us have with people that have hurt us. Leah or  Lola. I don't know if either of you want to come in to any of those points. I feel

Lola  1:07:32

like, yeah. Just to add to kind of what Billy was saying, I don't have direct experience of working in the Violence Against Women sector, but I think that, like when you live in a violent, like social landscape, you are always forced as a like political subject or as a person, to navigate contradictions right, like a lot of us are engaged in violent institutions, whether they be, you know, medicine or education or whatever, there are some ways that we are always attached to spaces of contradiction and institutions that cause harm. And as you were talking Billy, I was reflecting on the fact that, like you know, when Sisters Uncut was started, it was mainly contained people who were frontline workers and people who held those same frustrations right, but who were adopting a kind of in and against strategy to say, just like you did, that our individual relationships, that we cultivate and the support that we offer to survivors is absolutely essential we know to their survival, but we know our place in this wider institution is compromised, and so we do what we can outside of we find other spaces to advance a set of political demands, right? And I think there is a way that you can get you can. You can spend a lot of time thinking about whatever contradiction you inhabit. And you can think, you know, is it bad? Is it good? But actually, like being able to understand sites of power and being able to understand, okay, this is possible within this space. And actually my agency, or, you know, my political organising, or my robust demand making can happen in another space. And ultimately, you're moving towards a situation where you want to be able to abandon what isn't working, what isn't working for you, what isn't working for the people that you're attempting to help. And I think that the in and against pressure allows that, and it's a framework that has been used historically by, you know, anti racist feminist organising groups in this country, and one that I think, you know, we need to bring back in a really robust way, you know,

Molly 1:09:47

yeah, absolutely. Leah, I don't know if

you is anything else that you want to respond to. Everyone did such a beautiful job just then as well. So kind of something that you mentioned, Lola earlier, kind of, I wanted to come back to because it really connects with some of the questions that we've had in the chat you spoke about, kind of the importance of defining our terms. And yeah, I so agree with that. And kind of, yeah, a few of the questions were around that kind of define the definition the focus of this resource. And kind of so, kind of, Andrew asked about whether the resource could be applicable, kind of to various global contexts, Eden asked kind of if we could expand a little bit more about kind of that term gender based violence and why, why it's important within abolition and abolitionist work. And Silvana also kind of spoke about whether we should be speaking about corporate power and private wealth as much as we speak about the carceral state when it comes to kind of carceral expansion, which I think is something the resource kind of gestures towards, but doesn't really kind of like it's, you know, it's a discussion tool it doesn't, can't do everything. So, yeah, I'm interested in any of your thoughts on any of those kind of very, very specific questions or about kind of terms within the resource that you want to kind of unpack and a little bit more as well. Yeah, I don't know who again, who would like to begin?

Leah  1:11:04

Yeah, I'm happy to kind of jump in on the kind of point around speaking about corporate power and private wealth as much as we like speak about the carceral state. And I think yes, absolutely is the answer. I think, if we think about the border regime in particular, and increasingly the prison estate, these are very much profit making enterprises. So you know, immigration detention centers run by companies like formerly by G4S, which you know, manages the apartheid wall and is in Occupy Palestine companies like Serco and geo kind of run immigration detention centers in the UK. If we think about deportation, charter flights, partnerships of commercial airlines services that escort people onto deportation charter flights, asylum accommodation is privately owned by companies like Clear Spring Mears. This is very poor quality accommodation. Bibi Stockholm, which is the kind of floating prison off the coast of Devon, is privately owned again, so the money that is plowed into this whole enterprise, into these Castle structures, you know, is way more than the money that people would need to be supported in the community, for example, if we want to make that direct comparison via something like Universal Credit, if they needed that support, and blocking people from accessing higher education and work is also part of what prevents people from surviving and thriving. So not wanting to go down the kind of neo liberal migrants contribute narrative, but the idea that, you know, the border regime is a cost effective process is one that just kind of doesn't make sense. It's an incredibly expensive enterprise, and it puts that money directly into the pocket of, you know, boards and investors of these private companies. So yeah, thank you for whoever raised that point.

Molly  1:13:03

It was Silvana, yeah, and I think absolutely. And I think one of the things about the resources that it really does, yeah, connect with that, those broader capitalist corporate institutions, but kind of through that lens of carceral, as you spoke to Leah. Lola or Billy, I don't know if either of you want to speak to kind of, any of the kind of the things that Leah was just saying or, or also, kind of, Eden's question about gender based violence, Andrew's question about the global contexts, or anything?

Lola 1:13:32

I think, sorry, could you remind me of Andrew's question? And I'll try.

Molly  1:13:36

So Andrew asked about, kind of, whether any of the panelists thought this resource could be, oh,

Lola  1:13:41

I think, I guess, I guess I'll start there. I think that what I find really interesting about like practices of abolition is that I do think they change on the basis of how different states are organised and also how resources are organised. For example, in this country, like just the existence of local councils enables us to ask us a different set of questions about how we might funnel resource into a specific area, right? But that's not applicable everywhere. And so I think that, like, whilst obviously there are, like, broad abolitionist principles that you can that the resource speaks to that, obviously, travel and are transnational in their operation. I do think that when we're talking about, like, really localised practices, like of an abolitionist politics that really often depends on not only location, but culture. Like, there are so many different ways of like approaching people, how people understand, what people understand, by the term community, for example. And I think that they're because, you know, America is a hegemonic, imperialist power. I think a lot of the terms for abolition of abolitionist thinking have come through there. But I think of something, for example, like the End SARS movement in Nigeria, which was like a huge anti police, anti state violence, anti police brutality, series of marches, practices, protests by individuals, and how often that wasn't read through an abolitionist lens, because it is illegible to understandings, to Western powers, basically, and to, like some Western frameworks for understanding community, understanding what even counts as political mobilisation, because some people aren't even seen as worthwhile political subjects? And so I think that the answer to that question is, rather than attempt to kind of import one stable definition, thinking about abolition as a flexible, transitory set of principles and practices that must be translated and re-situated constantly, is really important. And also, I guess, on the question of gender based violence, I think actually, the resource itself provides a really great answer to this, to say that, well, what I think about the term, kind of gender based violence, kind of broadly, is that within as feminists, right, we're always trying to expand our understandings of what constitutes gender, but also who is capable of enacting harm, right? There is a very binaristic and very simpleised, simplified understanding of those who are subordinated and those who exert power, right? And I think what the term gender based violence is one alert us or the public to the fact that any person is capable of committing harm, but also I don't. I think maybe the question came from a kind of fear or anxiety about the erasure of violence against women. And we know looking at statistics, we know from lived experience that women constitute a huge makeup. You know, a great proportion of the people that experience violence in this world. And I don't think terms like gender based violence actually erase that. I think they allow us to think about how that violence happens in a wider context, but also in a context in which gender is not only read as meaning woman or man, right, where gender also names a set of relations between peoples that are that can be applied regardless of biological sex, in ways that are either liberating or in ways that are harmful or dangerous. I hope that makes sense.

Molly  1:17:47

Oh, it makes total sense. And I think it also speaks to the importance of translating, that you've just done a really important bit of translating around that term. And I think you know, abolitionist work is translating, and so is feminist practice, as well as well. It's like a constant process of translating and for others and for ourselves. Billy, I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add. If not, I do have a final question, a whiz bang, speedy question. No, okay, fantastic. So I guess the final question is just one that you know, I've been I've been mulling over myself in my own work, where I explore stuckness and feminism. And I think something that I often think about and wonder is, yeah, how we support and sustain each other when, kind of the expectations and the kind of, like lure of abolition, you know, I look at the abolitionist strategies, and my heart sings, and then I think, you know, there's that, that fear of this, the crushing disappointment when it's not just there, it's not materialized right in my doorstep, um, so, yeah, I just would like just, maybe just a sentence from you more about kind of how, how you find ways to support and sustain yourselves, but also kind of the communities that you're organising within, and what it means to kind of, yeah, support and sustain each other as we do this work.

Billy  1:19:05

I guess for me, it's just about a practice of noticing. I think, I think we're told that, you know, we've talked about it a lot in this session, just that the idea that the things we want to see in the world don't exist yet, or they have to be like conjured, or come up with or and actually, I think I just always come back to, yeah, a practice of noticing. I know that if I look around, maybe at the at my clients, at what they're doing for themselves, maybe in my community, maybe in other communities, maybe in like organising spaces rather than like workplaces, there's so many creative strategies and responses happening all of the time that are essential to what we're talking about here. I guess I just remind myself that it's it's absolutely everywhere what we want to see it is. It is already in existence. It's just about us making intentional choices, about moving towards moving ourselves and our labor and our skills and our energy, towards those things, towards noticing that they're there and that they need us to keep working towards that, yeah, yeah. I guess that helps with the feeling of scarcity or out of reachness, just noticing

Molly  1:20:32

that's really, really beautiful, and everyone's smiling, and that's really nice. I love our practice of noticing. Lola or Leah

Leah  1:20:40

yeah, I think a very, very, I mean, exactly the same as what Billy has just said, to be honest, like and to give a practical example of one thing that I try and kind of hold in my mind as an example, I was interviewing a Roma women's group in Albania who were supporting community members who were experiencing domestic violence, and they said, You know, it's not an option for us to call the police. The police were incredibly violence towards them. The police wouldn't even come to where they live, because the city wouldn't even build a road to where they lived, and they had to fight to even have, you know, waste collection and street lights and that kind of thing. So they were just like, calling the police is not an option. But instead, they had a system where they would open up their houses to each other. So if, you know, someone needs to get some space from a partner, they would go and stay with a friend for a few days until the situation had been, you know, like a bit diffused and it might have otherwise escalated. And so not only was this a strategy that they had, it was a strategy that was very normalised among their community. So nobody got their backup if they went, you know, if you went to stay somewhere else for a few nights, that didn't kind of mean something terrible. And that was just one strategy they used to support each other as survivors. And what they said in our conversations was, and this is a quote that I often think about, ‘we have a million ways to solve our problems, and, you know, calling the police was just never one of those methods. And they had a million other things they would do.’

Molly  1:22:08

Really does put it into perspective, doesn't it? Just yeah, how many things that there are available to us if we do exactly what Billy said and do that practice of noticing? Lola,

Lola  1:22:19

I think, yeah, I guess I could talk forever about the question of, like, stuckness, and the effective experience of feeling as if, you know, less is possible than actually is. And I think that that's something, I think it's, you know, it is created by the social landscape that we live in. And it's really important to be aware of that, that, like the any feeling of stuckness or isolation or alienation that you feel is produced so can be undone, right? That that's, for me, a really an important starting point. I think maybe, like one or two things that I think is that something is always, like changed in the doing. So, like, even if I think a lot of people expect for a transformed world to, as you said, Molly, kind of like meet them on the doorstep in this very linear way. And I feel like if you begin to think in non linear ways about the historical legacies to which you belong, about the practices of like, radical connection, you know, like anti capitalism, feminism, etc, that you are actively engaging with, and how those are not only connected to the past, but actively producing a future as you as you do them, then you're then small interventions that you make into social landscapes, whether that's like helping someone who like intervening in a stop and search, for example, those carry much more social weight, and you'll feel much more courageous and much less scared if you understand that in the context of like, you know, things are moving in a circle. I am connected to other people that have done this in the past. I am not just one individual subject. I am intimately into my life is intimately interdependent with other people. That's something that I try to remember, and something that you know informs my determination. I also, you know, at the most basic level, try and think about anything that I think is impossible in my social landscape is happening somewhere else in the world, right? And we see that through the example that Leah just gave. But we also see, I think this is especially important to consider if you are somebody who lives in like the West and especially the UK and the US, because your understanding of the world can seem all consuming when actually, if you look at the radical histories and practices that are happening in places like Cuba, for example, a lot of demands that we're making have been actualised or realised, either historically or presently. And we see that also in instances around like Palestine and university organising as well. So it's really important to engage in radical histories outside of the Imperial core, because that, I think, also, you know, affirms this sense of connection to a struggle. Yeah. And I also, I guess Lastly, I'll say, you know, I think of myself. I think of the politics that I practice as a practice and not merely a set of abstracted beliefs, right? And practice involves repetition, and so when I'm faced with this question of, we are doing the same thing, we are asking the same questions, it's like, of course, we are our dreams and our visions are incredibly capacious, so they are going to really take time, right? And if I don't see it, somebody else will. That's, you know, I It feels nice to give myself a task, a job, to then hand on to somebody else, rather than assuming that I will see the fruition of everything, of every intervention I intend to make.

Mo 1:26:00

Thank you so much, everyone.

nd welcome back. Well, not welcome back, it's me again. I certainly found the round table and the discussions amazing, and I could stay here much longer, pulling the threads together, and I'm sure you could all as well. So from the questions and the speakers, we hope that you recognise that this resource doesn't provide the answers, but provides a tool, the chart, the booklet, and a discussion guide for your own discussion groups, as Lola and others have said, abolition is pragmatic work. It's an organizing strategy, and part of that strategy is political education, and that is something that our feminine movement has lost its way on. So we hope that you can use this resource as part of reviving that history of political education. Abolition is about highlighting the connections between things and our speakers and the questions from how we raise our kids to the global capitalist, racist, colonial corporate hell that we toil under, have pulled those connections together. So we're just going to highlight the discussion groups that are happening that we know about, and really encourage you to organise your own groups in your communities or at work or amongst your friends to use the tool to come together and talk, that is its purpose. Let us know if you're planning to host an event, and we'll pop it on our website. And please do look at the Facilitation Guide, which hopefully someone will be putting in the chat that we have made to go along with this resource. And we really would encourage you also to fill in our feedback form. So if we didn't get a chance to answer any of the questions, or if you think some things could be thought about in more detail, please do fill in the feedback form.

Mo 1:27:54

The discussion groups that are happening that we know of our abolitionist futures are holding an online discussion group on Tuesday the 25th of June, and this will be more of a chance for everyone to dive in and talk about the resource. There's an in-person event on in Newcastle and in Belfast on June the 26th and another Level Up are hosting an event online again in July the 22nd if you can't make those dates. So as I said, Please do fill in the feedback form and sign up or get organising your own discussion groups. Thanks everyone for your time and attention. Thank you, especially to our speakers tonight, to our foreground and background support people and everyone that has contributed to the resource along the way. I'm going to be listening back to this recording, because it helps me to brainwash myself, and I hope that you will do that too. And also, I want to do a shout out in particular to Lamble, who was unable to join us this evening, but was their usual lovely, diligent and committed self in the background, making sure that we all got here today. So thanks everyone. Sorry for running over. Yeah, that's all from us. And have a good evening. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Should’ve we got a goodbye song on the go, sorry, sorry for forgetting that everyone. Hope you have a nice evening.