Sojourning Toward Black Liberation Through Prison Abolition: A Reading List by Cam Morris

 
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A reading list by CAM Morris from their teach-in, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us ‘Round: Sojourning Toward Black Liberation Through Prison Abolition” for The School For Black Feminist Politics.

On Saturday, May 15, 2021, activist and organizer CAM Morris led the teach-in “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us ‘Round: Sojourning Toward Black Liberation Through Prison Abolition”.

About the teach-in: Black folks are a self-determined and powerful people who have always been fighting against systematic structures of oppression like reproductive injustice, labor exploitation, and a predatory unjust system that continues to criminalize, abuse, terrorize and incarcerate Black people. From fights to end the death penalty, the decriminalization of sex work; and the recent popularized calls to defund the police, community organizers have been mobilizing and politicizing communities to fight against state violence and to build communal infrastructures that make policing and prisons obsolete. We will discuss the history of abolition, why reforms dont work, investigating the inherent violence of all state funded structures (including non-profit industrial complex), and examine the contradictions of building political power in electoral work in relation to arguments like “harm reduction” and prison investments if our long term goal is African liberation.

This workshop will also promote community-based practices for alternatives to calling the police, building sustainable neighborhoods through mutual aid and collective care, and creating the conditions that communities need to lead in self-determination towards Black liberation.

About the teach-in curator: Orginally from the southside of Chicago, now residing in Washington, DC, (occupied Piscataway land) CAM (they/them) is a non-binary Black radical community organizer. Holding queer feminist, and abolitionist principles in the deeps of CAM’s work, combatting colonization and Neo-liberalism, against US occupation and war, patraicahal violence, and capitalism. CAM has been fighting to shift material conditions in Black communities through their organizing work in DC and Chicago, to combat white supremacy, state violence, imperialism, and capitalist empire structures. As a 12-year-old youth, CAM led a campaign to combat the inhumane practices at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. While organizing years later in Chicago, CAM joined Love and Protect, which is an organization founded by Mariame Kaba that supports survivors criminalized for self-defense, which resulted in survivors receiving reduced incarceration time and early prison releases.

CAM also served as a board member of a community garden and pushed aldermans and community members to create sustainable relationships between land sovereignty and Black ecology studies. CAM is currently studying Black communist feminism, Black and indigenous anarchy, Black leftism, and the history of African liberation efforts. CAM is unapologetic about fighting for the rights of Black folks in the US, and globally. CAM’s long-term goals include moving spaces to deepen their ability to be survivor-centered in practice.

 

“Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us ‘Round: Sojourning Toward Black Liberation Through Prison Abolition”

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