Where do we Start

by CHRIS LEVY

Where do I start; or, should I say where do we start? Do we start with a history lesson? Is it because people don't know the oppressive past of prisons that they silently sanction them? Perhaps a course in economics. Maybe people don't know that millions of dollars are poured into a system designed to break those who arrive already damaged. Unfortunately, I don't think it has been ignorance that has led to the construction of an institution that normalizes dehumanizing those held within. You see, the process of normalization took place in the minds and the hearts of the masses. Therefore, in the effort to abolish prisons, we to have to work on the minds and the hearts of the people. We can not just tell them the number of those housed within a cage, while failing to show how that number is much more than that. We can not just tell them about an oppressive institution, while failing to detail how that oppression strives to suck the humanity out of those held within in the institution. The reason work to abolish prisons is because of the sorrow, pain, and trauma prisons have on those within and the communities they come from. So, as we abolish the institution, let's not forget that the fight is about the people.