Tomorrow, April 4, Donald Trump will be arrested and taken into a New York City courthouse, fingerprinted, and have his mugshot taken. He’s Donald Trump, so he will be out on bail by the evening, just in time for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
None of this is particularly surprising—what will be surprising is if he ever sees time behind bars because, in case it’s not obvious: as a wealthy, white man with access to infinite resources, he’s not likely to go to prison.
As expected, the internet is exploding with a range of responses: from Trump’s supporters, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will be showing up en masse to protest his arrest, to his critics who are delighting in the idea of watching him be taken in, CSI-style. While it’s unsurprising to find such hostility to the former president on the (very broad) left, given his ruinous policies on matters like immigration, I’m shocked to see some of my own friends and fellow travellers looking forward to his humiliation. One of them in particular startled me with a call to “Lock him up!”
Why, you might wonder, in a country founded on genocide and slavery, am I surprised at such responses? Because these people are also all self-proclaimed abolitionists. And their hypocrisy is shocking.
Well, let me qualify that: these are the people who like to swoon over prison abolitionists, but they are not the people who’ve been doing the work for decades. The latter include women like Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Mariam Kaba, queer radicals like Eric Stanley, Miss Major, and Hugh Ryan. For these and countless others, the project of abolition continues regardless of the winds of fashion. I can remember a time, just a few years ago, when it was impossible to get anyone outside of queer radical abolitionist spaces to acknowledge that prisons are a horrific idea. You’d be snickered at as out-of-touch loonies if you so much as brought up the idea.
These days, it seems that everyone’s an “abolitionist.” Except when it comes to the people they don’t like. And, certainly, there’s very little to like about Trump. But if you’re going to call yourself an abolitionist at a radical art opening or a cocktail party or your queerdo Friendsgiving, you don’t get to do so selectively. I recently saw an “abolitionist” exulting in the sentencing of someone who had murdered his family and declaring that he needed to be strung up in public (I can’t recall the murderer’s name: there are, sadly, so many such cases). A few weeks later, the same person was on a podcast delivering a sincere-sounding bit about prison abolition.
It’s impossible to tell if such strangely discordant responses coming from the same person—and I see it everywhere in my circles, so it’s not an isolated phenomenon—are due to hypocrisy or because there’s a genuine disconnect, an inability to comprehend and process what prison abolition actually means: the end of prisons everywhere and an end to carceral responses that include calling for someone to be strung up in public.
Prison abolition is not a set of personal beliefs: it’s a political investment in and a societal commitment to ending a prison industrial complex that breaks bodies and communities but leaves systems of power untouched—the same systems that produce the conditions that make abuse, rape, murder and other kinds of brutality possible in the first place. It’s also not about forgiveness and pity: one of the most frustrating aspects of prison abolition discourse, in some quarters, is the extent to which it’s sometimes soaked in affect, requiring the abolitionist to also sign on to a program of empathy and love. But you don’t have to like Trump, and you’re allowed to want to bash in the head of someone who has abused you or your friends. The point of prison abolition is the withdrawal of resources from a carceral system—and the creation of a new system of the un-carceral means that we allow it to override our personal desires for vengeance. Think of it this way: you may want to inflict violence upon someone, but you allow the system to hold you back just as you might allow your friends to physically stop you from beating up someone.
The road to prison abolition is not perfect and uncomplicated, and I’ve seen enough to understand why some become frustrated (the presence of white people whose Tears of Guilt threaten to flood attempts at Restorative Justice, for instance).1 But that kind of frustration is something to be dealt with honestly, and we can reconcile ourselves to losing some along the way. What’s much more critical is to make sure we take prison abolition seriously, as a project we see to its fruition—not something we abandon when it doesn’t suit us. “Lock him up!” in response to Trump’s arrest gets us nowhere.
Prison abolition is not an outfit to be worn when in fashion and discarded when it seems too outrageous or awkward to wear. It’s a serious commitment that requires wrestling with difficult ideas and realities. Commit to it fully, or don’t—but choose where you stand, because actual lives are at stake.
For more, see:
Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion, ed. Ryan Conrad.
Nathan J. Robinson, “Prison Abolition Even For Elizabeth Holmes,” and “Can Prison Abolition Ever Be Pragmatic?”
Maya Schenwar, “My Sister Died of an Overdose. Defunding the Police Might Have Saved Her,” and Prison By Any Other Name, with Victoria Law.
And my own, “Every President Is A Sociopath.”
Image: Jimmy Chan
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
