Envisioning and Organizing for Freedom from Violence in the California Carceral State

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Abolition is fundamentally a politics of seeking futures beyond the violence of the prison regime. This roundtable brings together scholars engaged in feminist prison abolitionist research and organizing to trace the gendered, racialized violences of the California carceral state and identify key nodes of antiviolence struggle and abolitionist “dream making.” Topics include: historical and current practices of inside/outside organizing in California’s women’s prisons; rethinking “reentry” through released women’s perspectives on freedom and justice; organizing strategies for resisting judicial violence against domestic violence survivors; law enforcement violence against black women; and conceptualizing abolition as decolonial praxis.

Sub Unit

• General Conference / SUBTHEME SIX: Political, cultural and artistic movements that “demand the impossible:” “abolition” and beyond

Moderator

• Marissa Alexander, Marissa Alexander Justice Project

Presenters

• Alisa Bierria, UC Berkeley

• Sarah Haley, University of California, Los Angeles

• Colby Lenz, University of Southern California

• Stephanie Lumsden, University of California, Los Angeles

• Romarilyn Ralston, California State University, Fullerton

• Emily Thuma, University of California, Irvine