When I speak of prison abolition rather than prison reform, even those opposed to prison will gasp and run in circles like Chicken Little anticipating the sky falling. But I don’t even advocate JUST the abolition of the prison system, but hierarchy in general, the end of the few ruling the many, of the State dictating to everyone.

We cannot conceive of a world absent the oppression, a world where people are free. But consider: there was a time when, if you told people that kings and queens would someday hold only symbolic power, they would have laughed at you. A world NOT run by autocrats with unlimited power? Laughable. Then, in feudal times, if you told people that their whole system would soon be obliterated, they could not have possibly conceived of the system that would come next. Or during the Crusades, if you had proposed a time when the pope would someday be a figurehead in charge of a handful of guards in funny costumes, nobody would have been able to imagine what system would come after, who would hold power, and how it would work.

Same now. A world without prisons is essentially a world without governments… since government need prisons as enforcement of ITS laws, and without enforcement there can be no imposition, no government…and they call you crazy. As crazy as they called the old testament prophets and everyone else who spoke about ‘not one stone stacked on top of another…’ It’s a lack of imagination. Even as we live in a system that is unraveling, coming apart, tearing at the seams, people still cannot conceive of something else. Something else. Something ‘not this’.

It’s coming. It’s happening.

Sean Swain

Political Prisoner of the State of Ohio.

https://seanswain.noblogs.org/post/2016/05/04/abolishing-slavery/#more-2504