Fierce Urgency of Now: Building Movements to End the Prison Industrial Complex in Our Schools

• In Event: Building the Radical Imaginary Now: Abolitionist Practices and Movements to End Our Carceral State

Abstract

Drawing on a forum, Without Walls: Abolition & Rethinking Education in Oakland, CA to dialogue about strategies to challenge carceral logics in classrooms and communities, this article contextualizes the intensification of policing and the criminalization of young people and communities that continues to reach into and beyond all levels of K-12 schools. In many cities across the US, vibrant initiatives are underway to reduce contact with police on campuses, to build responses to harm in the classroom and staffroom that do not involve criminalization, and to create and try strategies to shield students and families from immigration and customs enforcement (ICE). Participants in Without Walls discussed a wide range of ways to build abolitionist practices in and around schools. At the heart of this dialogue on challenging the carceral logics, policies and practices in schools: How do we work toward rigorous, loving, and inclusive classrooms and campuses? This article argues that prison abolition and education must be thought and practiced together, now more than ever. We share a number of suggestions and starting places based on the ways many educators and youth advocates are building the capacity to challenge the prison industrial complex.

Authors

• Farima Pour-Khorshid, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University

• Patricia Krueger-Henney, University of Massachusetts at Boston

• Chrissy Anderson-Zavala, University of California - Santa Cruz