What is Abolition? A BGE Takeover with Ki’Amber Thompson
A note from The Oath:
We are honored to participate in, for the second year in a row, Black Girl Environmentalist’s Reclaiming Our Time collaboration series.
This year, we were able to share our platform and most importantly, learn from our match Ki’Amber Thompson.
We hope you read through to the end, reflect upon the questions she poses, and take that knowledge and turn it into positive action for planet, inclusion, and adventure!
-Hanna
So what is abolition?
And why does it matter for environmental and climate justice?
(We are specifically talking about the movement to abolish the system of police and prisons.)
The abolition movement is a continuation of the movement to abolish slavery in the West. The contemporary abolition movement is a vision, strategy, and practice of a world without police and prisons by addressing the root causes of problems in our society. Abolitionists aim to dismantle the current system of criminalization and punishment that rely on policing and imprisonment as solutions to social, economic, and political issues and create alternatives to addressing needs and harm in our communities through systems that can facilitate safety, healing, restoration, transformation, and accountability.
Abolition says nobody is disposable. Just like in nature, nothing is disposable. Nature has processes like decomposition that transform dead matter into life again.
Abolition is a practice for how we relate to ourselves, to one another, and to the land.
What does the abolition of policing and imprisonment have to do with environmentalism and climate justice?
#1: The same structures that are responsible for the current system of policing and imprisonment are also responsible for the climate crises and environmental injustices experienced by Black, Indigenous, Brown, and low-income communities.
(Those structures are colonialism and racial capitalism. I won’t define these terms here but if you want to educate yourself I urge you to read anything by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Eve Tuck, and Laura Pulido to understand these terms!)
An abolitionist approach to environmental and climate issues means getting to the root of the problem rather than take a reformist approach.
Addressing a root cause would mean the abolition of property or the undoing of ideas of relations to land and bodies as property. A key idea of colonialism and racial capitalism is the idea that land and human bodies are things that can be owned, given a value, and exploited for resources and profit. This idea and way of relating to land and people supported the displacement and genocide of indigenous peoples and enslavement in this country.
All of this is connected to why we’re facing the current climate crisis and various environmental justice issues, which Black, Indigenous, Brown, and low-income people are most impacted by.
#2: Criminalization is detrimental to our environmental movements and all movements for justice
Examples:
Stop Cop City Movement to defend the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta. People participating in direct actions against cop city in Atlanta were considered domestic terrorists and police officials have made efforts to stop national solidarity with the Stop Cop City Movement. Prosecutors tried to charge the Atlanta Solidarity Fund under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute.
Repression of free speech and activism against the Zionist occupation, genocide, and destruction in Palestine. What’s happening in Palestine is not only a social issue but an environmental issue as well. Repression is occurring through police violence against people protesting for Palestine and the House of Representatives Resolution-894, which equates anti-zionism with anti-semitisim. Anti-zionism does not equal anti-semitism. People can critique the Israeli government and be critical of Israeli occupation of Palestine, and that does not mean people are expressing hate against Jewish people.
It’s clear from the repression tactics of the Stop Cop City Movement and the movement against the ethnic cleansing and destruction in Palestine, that our solidarity is a threat. Our solidarity is a threat because there is power in our solidarity.
There is power in us caring about things that are happening in places far away from us. There is power in us recognizing how our struggles for freedom, safety, and justice are interconnected.
#3: The same people who are criminalized, policed, and imprisoned are also the most vulnerable people to climate change and are on the frontlines of environmental justice.
(Relatedly, we live within a culture of disposability that shows up in how we treat land and materials and with how certain groups of people are regarded as disposable.
Example:
People in prisons are one of the populations most vulnerable to climate change because they are literally trapped in cages and cannot leave when there are floods, hurricanes, extreme heat waves, wildfires, etc., but are treated as undeserving of rights. They are also on the frontlines of climate change and environmental injustice. Houseless folks and communities of color globally are also treated as disposable (ex: placing environmental toxins like oil refineries and landfills in communities of color)
The culture of disposability relates to how we use and treat lands and materials (ex: landfills, fast fashion, pollution of certain neighborhoods, etc.)
My abolitionist environmentalism in practice:
The Charles Roundtree Bloom Project
The Charles Roundtree Bloom Project is an outdoor healing justice program for youth impacted by incarceration, policing, criminalization, and detention. It creates spaces of communal healing through reconnecting with the land and facilitating place-based social-environmental justice education.
We do a wide range of activities including, community gardening, hiking, surfing, rock climbing, camping, and art to reconnect youth to the land to learn and heal in community.
In a world where to be Black and Brown and be outside too often means being surveilled, policed, criminalized, and murdered, it is especially important in the Bloom Project that we proactively protect our youth and cultivate spaces outside where they feel a sense of safety, belonging, and freedom to play, learn, and express themselves.
Radical imagination
Abolition is a project of radical imagination. In the Bloom Project, we are teaching our youth to imagine a world beyond the borders, walls, and cages that attempt to divide us. To imagine and create worlds of safety, care, freedom, and justice.
“The Bloom Project helped me be more free. Like I was free before, but it helped me like show people who you are, don’t hide. ”
In my work with the Bloom Project I am experimenting, practicing, learning, healing, and dreaming toward a world where we can breathe.
An Offering:
Abolitionist questions for your environmentalism
How can we move away from a culture disposability (both single use items & incarceration) and instead move toward a culture of regeneration?
For example:
creating sustainable alternatives that mimic the ways of nature
building structures that help people thrive
supporting community healing and accountability to make our communities safe
Black and Brown youth are often policed in outdoor spaces.
Remember Christian Cooper, the Black birder who had the police called on him in Central Park?
How can you commit to honoring Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples’ relationship to the land and the outdoors rather than policing and criminalizing them?
If you are doing sustainability work or value sustainability…
Are you also practicing and holding yourself accountable with regard to how you do your work?
How we do this work is just as important as the work that we do.
This means we have to be able to address the harmful practices and ways of doing things in our organizations that perpetuate the systems that prevent our sustainability.
What kind of world are you dreaming of? What worlds of collective safety, community care, and accountability are you dreaming?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ki’Amber Thompson is the founder and co-director of the Charles Roundtree Bloom Project (@crbloomproject), an outdoor healing justice program for youth impacted by criminalization, policing, and incarceration.