Tennessee lawmakers are throwing $415 million into their Multi-Agency Law Enforcement Training Academy, an 800-acre facility to be built ina historically Black Nashville neighborhood currently experiencing a housing crisis, extreme displacement and gentrification, according to Erica Perry, executive director of Nashville’s Southern Movement Committee. “$415 million is a huge amount of money, especially in a state where we ranked low in health, literacy, education and housing,” Perry said. “That’s extremely frustrating because we know that money could be spent on things that would help people have healthy, thriving, safe lives.” In response, the Southern Movement Committee began advocating for a proposed $10 million investment in the creation of an office of youth safety, community centers and alternatives to police in schools — programs they say the community actually needs. In June, $1 million of this budget was approved by Nashville City Council. Activists in Chicago have shared similar concerns. In the years before the planning of its Cop Academy in 2017, the city had seen the closure of half its mental health clinics, as well as the then-largest sweep of school closings in U.S. history. Naturally, many residents were outraged when the new multi-million dollar police training facility was announced, especially considering the Chicago Police Department already had seven other training facilities in the area. “Why is there suddenly this new investment available when we were told that the city was broke, when we were asking for investments in our own communities?” asked Benji Hart, an adult ally with the youth-led No Cop Academy Coalition.
Abolition of police and prisons
Abolish is to flourish! Against the prison industrial complex and for transformative justice.
See Critical Resistance's definitions below:
The Prison Industrial Complex
The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.
Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for "tough on crime" politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.
Abolition
PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.
From where we are now, sometimes we can't really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.
Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.