Reset 6: Centring Justice & Care

By Roj Amedi

Reset Reading Group resources for discussion curated and introduced by Roj Amedi. Groups are encouraged to hold discussions of these readings during the week starting 20 July.

Please note we encourage all participants in RRG to read the introduction and watch the main-discussion starter Naomi Murakawa & #BlackLivesMatter: Liberals, Guns, and the Roots of the U.S. Prison Explosion. There are a number of further resources on the theme but we don’t expect everyone to get through all of these prior to meeting for discussion.

This is the final set of readings in the initial Reset Reading Group 6 theme program. The convenors are currently considering options for where to from here. Stay tuned for a survey to gather your input. Remember the readings for each theme will be available in the Reset collection on an ongoing basis. New to Reset Reading Group? Read Welcome to Reset Reading Group.

Contents

Introduction

I’m offering these readings as an opportunity to build people’s critical capacity and help them identify when certain answers entrench injustice rather than confront it.

Political systems extract and commodify the language of justice in order to neutralise it. As a community organiser and campaigner I have witnessed movements and campaigns on the precipice of gaining momentum almost instantly dissipate in those instances. Allies vanish, demands lose their potency and people trying to make real change are forced to engage with procedure as a form of distraction.

What I propose is not to bluntly refuse to negotiate or compromise with said systems – those on the frontlines of social change know how difficult it is to confront real dominant power. Instead, I’m offering these readings as an opportunity to build people’s critical capacity and help them identify when certain answers entrench injustice rather than confront it.

Genuine justice to me means achieving real and lasting material improvements in people’s lives. Justice should affirm people’s agency and allow them to live full and connected lives. In order to achieve that vision we need to make sure any calls for reform should take us a step closer to abolitioning violent institutions.

I have chosen this particular interview with Naomi Murakawa as the key text because I am a student of prison abolition. While I suggest people take the time to read and listen to a wide range of prison abolitionists who have been doing the work for decades, Murakawa’s book The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (2014) provides insight into how the liberal political establishment’s aim to make a violent system more palatable only intensifies the imprisonment of Black and brown peoples.

This is particularly salient in the Australian context, where First Nations peoples continue to be the most highly targeted and incarcerated group in the world, and State and Federal governments continue to reach for punitive measures in the middle of a global pandemic.

If you want to expand on the politics of co-option I have included pieces by Dr. Chelsea Bond, Eve Tuck and Professor Gary Foley. Three First Nations scholars who are challenging the settler colonial state’s white washing of racism, decolonisation and Sovereignty, and articulating how that ingrains the injustices faced by Indigenous peoples.

I’ve also included a list of resources around accountability, care and solidarity so we can begin to practice our learnings. I believe in order to abolish violent institutions we need to take care of one another and hold ourselves and each other accountable. That means building the language and the systems where we can come together, repair and acknowledge the material realities of our interconnected lives.

In order to abolish violent institutions we need to take care of one another and hold ourselves and each other accountable.

Roj Amedi

Main discussion-starter: Naomi Murakawa & #BlackLivesMatter: Liberals, Guns, and the Roots of the U.S. Prison Explosion

From the Laura Flanders Show: ‘We keep hearing there’s mistrust between police officers and communities of color as if the relationship just needs repair. But the fact is, police don’t suffer from a deficit of procedure; they suffer from an excess of power, and liberal procedural forms are not going to change that, says Naomi Murakawa, an associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton and the author of “The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.” According to Murakawa, liberals and conservatives have both expanded the US criminal code to produce today’s mass-incarceration state. She recommends we throw out our language about police brutality and profiling and transform the system entirely.’

Further resources

Defunding the police and abolishing prison

Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police – New York Times article by Mariame Kab, 2020

Who’s Left: Prison Abolition – a comic by Flynn Nicholls on Maraime Kaba’s work, 2017

Decolonization not co-option

Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship… turns decolonization into a metaphor. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. – Eve Tuck

Decolonization is not a metaphor – Eve Tuck, 2012

Native Title is not Land Rights – Gary Foley, 1997

Has racism in contemporary Australia entered the political mainstream? Dr Chelsea Bond’s speech, La Trobe University panel, 2019

Accountability and solidarity as care

What is Accountability? Panel discussion featuring Shannon Perez-Darby, Esteban Kelly, RJ Maccani, Mia Mingus, Sonya Shah, and Leah Todd. Moderated by Piper Anderson, 2019

A Modest Proposal for a Fair Trade Emotional Labor Economy(Centered by Disabled, Femme of Color, Working Class/Poor Genius) – Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Bitch Media, 2017

What we talk about when we talk about solidarity: an interview with Bini Adamczak – Bini Adamczak and Jan Ole Arps, Overland, 2018

‘We had Marx, they had Pauline’: left organising in poor communities – Joanna Horton, 2018

Prompts for discussion

Opening activity: How would you define ‘justice’? What words, concepts or behaviours do you associate with justice?
What stood out to you from Naomi Murakawa’s interview? If your perspective was challenged, in what way?
Can you name ways your community could confront injustice without using police or prisons?
Can you think of other examples where liberal reforms have reinforced injustice?
Can you think of examples where a conversation on a social issue has been co-opted and/or commodified? Who did the co-opting? What was the outcome of the co-option?
Who in the group has read or watched further resources? Share particular insights from each resource with others in the group.
Action: What will you do next to centre justice on an interpersonal level? How about on a structural level?

About Roj Amedi, Reset 6 curator

Roj Amedi is a writer, strategist and human rights advocate passionate about design, contemporary art, and access to justice. Since migrating to Australia as an Iraqi-Kurdish refugee, Roj has campaigned for refugee, migrant, and LGBTIQ+ rights with organisations such as GetUp!, Colour Code and Justice Connect. Previously, she has been an editor at Acclaim Magazine and Neue Luxury, written for the likes of Saturday Paper, SBS, Meanjin and Vault Magazine, and sits on the board of Overland Journal and the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival. Her life’s work is economic and racial justice.

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Author: Roj Amedi
Location: Australia
Release Date: 2020

Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC

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