Antifascism Means Refusing to Abandon
Antifascism Means Refusing to Abandon
Movements grounded in reciprocal care will be increasingly revolutionary in the years to come, and we have much to learn from people who have already learned to practice community care under fascistic or selectively authoritarian conditions.
With that in mind, I wanted to share an excerpt from my book with Mariame Kaba, Let This Radicalize You. In this section, we hear from formerly incarcerated organizer Monica Cosby about the work of surviving together under crushing conditions.
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Refusing to Abandon
Monica Cosby is an organizer, mother, grandmother, writer, and prison abolitionist. In November 2020, Kelly spoke with Cosby on Movement Memosabout her experiences organizing collective care as an incarcerated person.1 Prisons are notoriously fascistic, and women in prison are punished at higher rates than men and for smaller infractions. In Illinois prisons, women are frequently ticketed for “insolence” and can wind up in solitary confinement over their verbal tone or a goofy facial expression. Cosby said she came to a realization when she first learned of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s theorization of “organized abandonment.” She noted that the care work she experienced in prison functioned in opposition to abandonment and that imprisoned people often defy the system by “refusing to abandon each other.” Cosby explained, “We’ve already been thrown away. We’ve been thrown away by the system.” She added that, to some extent, many imprisoned people have also been “thrown away” by their families and people they knew before entering prison, who no longer stay in contact with them. Even imprisoned people with loving families can feel abandoned, as loved ones struggle to bal- ance costly visits and phone calls with other financial strains and responsibilities. According to Cosby, that shared sense of having been discarded creates a solidarity among some imprisoned people that’s about “refusing to throw each other away.” Put simply, Cosby explains, “We refuse to abandon.”
(the stories in the rest of this pieceare moving–well worth reading)