Over the last year of Uprising for Black Lives, the term “abolition” has entered into mainstream news media reflecting the central demands of the Movement to end — to defund — the systems of policing and caging human beings. Many, if not most, of us associate “abolition” with a narrow definition found in the historical movement to abolish U.S. slavery, something achieved with the 13th Amendment in 1865. Many, if not most, of us were not taught our US history with an understanding that there is a throughline of the freedom movement for Black lives beginning with the first Africans brought to the shores of North America on slave ships through 250 years of chattel slavery, through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement…to today. 

Now, in the beginning of the 21st century, “abolition” focuses on the systems of the “Prison Industrial Complex” and the ways that disproportionately Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities are criminalized, over-policed, caged, and dehumanized by a system of profit and control. The Abolition Movement today is rooted in racial justice and is a broad, creative, and growing movement to liberate our society from systems that profit from punishment and move toward practices of harm reduction, repair, and securing human needs so all can thrive.  

In order to explore how we as Unitarian Universalists can be involved in the current movement, Dana Buhl (Director of Social Justice) and Mark Woodlief (Lay Minister and Ministerial Search Committee member) decided to try a six-week study group with ten other congregants. Each week we prepare by reading, watching, and listening to resources about Abolition (vs. reform), policing, the carceral system and the criminal legal system, transformative justice, community safety, interfaith movements for abolition, the history of UUs with abolition, and more. We’ve also invited five community leaders, including Reverend Bill Sinkford, to share their perspectives on the abolition movement today. It feels simultaneously like a deep dive with fellow liberation seekers and a tiny scratch of the surface of the creative and hopeful vision of abolition. We asked participants in the group to share their reflections on what we are learning and how we are changed through this study and action. We’ll share more reflections in a series over the next couple of weeks.  

Abolition Study Group Reflections:

For years, I have considered my spiritual touchstone to be Light, the kind centered and uplifted in the organizing of civil rights leader Ella Baker. Her workshop “Give Light, and the People Will Find a Way” at Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School is credited by some historians for inspiring Rosa Parks and the bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama. 

The Light emitted by the People gathered in Zoom space throughout the six-week study group was palpable, even sacred. (In 2021, sacred wears a quasi-technological cloak.) We centered Love. We centered the voices, analysis, and music of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. We centered Revolution. We affirmed and supported each other as we explored resources. We held space for reimagining public safety where all the People are served, all the People are protected, all the People are worthy. 

As Zen priest Rev. angel Kyodo williams recently told a group of people, “We live inside of systems, but they don’t have to live inside of you.” May That Be So.

~Mark Woodlief

I feel transformation occurring. It’s like I’m discovering a new way of seeing, and injustices that have been hiding in plain sight are now flashing in neon all around me. This says a lot because I thought I was seeing so much anew during the Trump years. But there’s still so much more to uncover. I can’t unknow what I’m learning. There’s no going back to the unconscious rose-colored glasses of my pre-abolition self. 

As a human committed to fighting injustice and creating an abundant world, nothing else makes sense except for an abolitionist future. I am soaking in the curriculum both because the supporting materials are so well curated, and because I am in dialogue within a community, seeking answers collectively. I don’t think this work can be done in a vacuum, alone with a screen. This work demands conversation, presence, and vulnerability. 

I know I possess the fervor of a recent convert. And I don’t know practically where this learning will manifest in my life. I suppose it’s making it very easy for me to vote against the county sheriff’s proposed bond levy in May’s election. But I’m committed to more. More learning, more conversations, more shifts into a new way of being, more action.

~Mitra Anoushiravani

The reason I joined the Abolition Study Group was to pursue my curiosity about abolition, in the same spirit of learning more about what I have been focused on for the past several years: white supremacy and the dismantling of unjust social systems. What I have learned so far is that abolition has as much to do with creating new and better social systems as it does with eliminating what is unjust and not working in our country. I have also found something I wasn’t expecting at all: a spiritual connection in abolition work to building the Beloved Community. 

I had been asking myself recently, what is next? How do I put into practice what I am learning about through reading and discussions with friends, around white supremacy and racial injustice? Joining this group has opened up a new path forward for me on this question and these topics. I have found it helpful to make new connections in this supportive, learning environment. In our group we talk about practicing speaking up and being a witness to injustices that might happen in our neighborhoods or workplaces. We also discuss ideas for responding differently to crises, other than calling the police. This group is giving me a safe place to begin this practice. 

~Vicki Linter, May 2021

I had not heard the term “abolition” used for the current streams of struggle against injustice, police violence, and the carceral society. So I was interested to join a group to learn about this and to find ways to take action.  As we read, watched, studied, talked, and met with local leaders who are on the front lines of the movement I realized that abolition is the vision of a humane society that I and my parents before me have hoped for as long as I can remember. It won’t come about instantly but it is moving! And we all can learn about what it means, who is taking action, and how to get involved. I so hope that others will join together as we work for abolition, and for a just and humane society that nurtures all its members.  

~Barbara Walden, May 2021