This post is Part 2 of a series on social revolutions of the past 30 years — where public consciousness has massively shifted in favor of liberation. My aim is to create space to pause and acknowledge how things have changed in ways that once felt impossible, remind us that things can always be otherwise. It is inspired in part by Rebecca Solnit’s 2016 edition of Hope in the Dark and David Graeber’s 2007 essay “The Shock of Victory.”

I remember when I first heard the phase “abolish the police” back in 2020, I thought it was pretty much fantasy. I had grown up on copaganda movies and TV and immediately thought “but who’s going to catch all the murderers and rapists?!”

Once I had done some digging and learned oh, actually cops are NOT catching many murderers or rapists, my next logical question was, “okay so what’s your alternative?”

In this blog post, I will explore the evolution of mainstream ideas about policing and how we’ve shifted our focus away from reform efforts (which have failed time and again), to building a multi-faceted constellation of alternatives to support human flourishing at all levels of society — instead of punishing people and locking them up which, beyond being inhumane, simply does not stop crime.

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) by the luminary Angela Y. Davis.

Despite mainstream liberals like former President Obama decrying it as too radical, the slogan “Defund the Police” brought what was basically a fringe position before the #BlackLivesMatter uprisings of 2020 to a topic of discussion on all major news outlets. You could see it on signs at protests, graffiti on walls, banners on buildings, posters in coffee shops, and chalk on the sidewalks.

This massive spotlight on anti-police and prison movements also influenced mainstream film and TV, with a 2021 article claiming that 127 episodes of television had addressed the Movement for Black Lives onscreen just that year, with popular “progressive” cop shows like Brooklyn 99 doing entire arcs responding to the uprisings, culminating in beloved characters leaving the fictionalized NY police force.

No matter how controversial the slogan may have been in 2020, “Defund the Police” brought what was formerly a radical activist position into the mainstream discourse. Even those who disliked the slogan admitted that they were for shifting funding away from law enforcement and toward education, social services, arts, parks, and other quality of life investments in public infrastructure.

The average moderate today is far more aware that social and economic issues are often the source of crime, that prisons reproduce criminals, that the history of modern policing lies in slave patrols and protecting private property — NOT in bringing murderers to justice.

Today, “abolish ICE” is a rallying cry across even formerly moderate groups, like Indivisible, which co-organizes the mass rally #NoKings protests.

Protestors holding up anti-ICE signs at Portland Protest in 2025, source: Daily Emerald

This is genuinely worth celebrating, because as much as it might feel like the scale of the 2020 BLM protests came out of nowhere, there is a long and rarely-told history of abolitionist organizing from at least 1970s with Black Feminists and the “Free Angela Davis campaign” — but we can connect it much farther back to the lineage of abolitionist organizing against slavery in the 1800s with formerly enslaved Black activists and intellectuals like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.

The Backlash

As always, when groups succeed in organizing for liberation or achieving greater visibility, there is a reactionary backlash of people and institutions who are afraid of freedom and feel threatened by marginalized people gaining power and autonomy. Far from defunding the police, since 2020 a majority of states and cities have increased their police budgets and increased police militarization.

Police in riot gear facing down a line of protestors. source: Indiana University Library

In my previous entry of this series, I talked about the backlash against revisionist history projects like the 1619 Project, which was intended to provide a long overdue counter-narrative to the glorifying mythology most Americans are taught about the founding of our country. I also outlined the escalating trend of charging non-violent activists with terrorism. The anti-critical race theory (CRT) culture war also emerges out of the same milieu as anti-BLM backlash.

But despite all the effort Republicans put into misinformation and fearmongering, with the rise of nowadays, you’ll hear even previously moderate progressives say ACAB, particularly with the escalation in violence against even non-violent white citizens like Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good.

Today, even older white moderates are, for the first time, identifying law enforcement as a source of danger and not protection. In the past, this type of violence has largely been confined to borders, prisons, concentration camps, and BIPOC communities more generally, but with the extreme escalation of Trump 2.0’s ICE, we are seeing plainly the oft-quoted words:

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

-Maya Angelou

What I see as the biggest risk in the current phase of mass participation, rally-based politics which center narrowly on abolishing ICE and removing Donald Trump from office, is that framing the problem as only these issues discourages deeper questioning of the structures and institutions which are foundational to America.

My biggest fear

Calling ICE “the gestapo” (as I myself have in a video essay, analyzing the ties between a certain yogurt CEO and the Department of Homeland Security) is accurate in a sense of drawing a necessary comparison between the contemporary fascism of the Christian Nationalist regime of the US to that of Nazi Germany; on the other hand, calling ICE the gestapo conveniently distances ICE from the broader institution of US policing, making it seem like a complete and unprecedented aberration, when in reality, this is an expansion of the practices baked into America from its very founding by slave-owners who enjoyed waxing poetic about Liberty — as uncomfortable as that makes many of us (and it’s clear it makes Republicans VERY uncomfortable).

The influential Brazilian educator and theorist Paolo Freire refers to this type of cultural consciousness, where people are aware there are problems in society but tend to view those problems quite narrowly, as Naive Transitivity, which he defines:

An over-simplification of problems; by a nostalgia for the past; by underestimation of the common man; by a strong tendency to gregariousness; by a lack of interest in investigation, accompanied by an accentuated taste for fanciful explanations; by fragility of argument; by a strongly emotional style; by the practice of polemics rather than dialogue; by magical explanations - Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (1997): p. 18

When I see bumper stickers saying “No one is above the Law” or “Impeach Trump” or “Veto the Cheeto” — and the very basic “No Kings Since 1776,” it’s clear that these people are invoking rose-colored ideas of American Democracy and a nostalgia for the American Revolution.

Slogans that center on a single action — imagining that “the problem” would be solved if we simply got rid of Trump or got Congress to veto his laws (despite many of his actions being carried out by Executive Order, far easier to wield than a 2/3 supermajority in a body of government engineered to be disconnected from democratic oversight — the very existence of the Senate represents founders’ fears that too much democratic control would be dangerous!) — these slogans are oversimplifications of structural problems.

My biggest hope

Putting aside my skepticism that the large number of people attending anti-Trump rallies are really questioning the roots of American imperialism or white supremacy, I am seeing a tremendously inspiring trend emerging in bottom-up democracy: the rise of Neighbor Unions — a relatively novel form of autonomous place-based organizing. The Institute for Social Ecology defines them:

an organization dedicated to building a community of solidarity at the scale of a neighborhood, and empowering that community to strive toward self-governance. Through welcoming events, consistent outreach, relationship building, and practical projects, organizers work to help people overcome their sense of isolation and powerlessness by getting to know their neighbors, supporting each other in concrete ways, and participating directly in the process of reshaping local life for the common good.

Neighbor Unions emerge from Murray Bookchin’s work on Social Ecology, anarchism, direct management experiments like the Rojava Revolution, indigenous consensus-based self-management practices which go back thousands of years, and the experiences of community assemblies practiced in the #Occupy Movement. They are fundamentally grassroots and broad, not stuck in insular sectarian debates.

source: Institute for Social Ecology

Neighbor Unions are organizing locally to take care of our neighbors and build confidence in our abilities to self-manage and take direct action in our communities.

That includes restorative and transformative justice, like that practiced by women-led community mediators in Rojava, advocacy and prison diversion programs like the Restorative Justice Initiative in NYC, the effective but ultimately underfunded experiment in 911 crisis call diversion CAHOOTS in Eugene, OR, and many other initiatives in the U.S. and around the world.

It’s not easy work to replace a system of structural policing and incarceration, but the very first step toward it is building trust with our local community and learning how to take care of each other.

Suggested Reads

• Are Prisons Obsolete?, Angela Y. Davis
• Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety, Cara Page & Erica Woodland
• Rattling the Cages: Dispatches from Behind Bars, AK Press

#writing #revolution #stopcopcity #blm #abolition #education #essay #defundthepolice #abolishthepolice #abolishICE #prisonabolition #prison #prisonlife #prisonbreakedit #freethemall #criminaljustice #endmassincarceration #criminaldefense #criminaldefenselawyer #accesstojustice #prisonart #notguilty #lawyers #endcashbail #court #wrongfulconvictions #endthedeathpenalty #criminaldefenseattorney #restorativejustice #transformativejustice

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This post is Part 1 of a series on social revolutions of the past 30 years — examples where public consciousness has massively shifted in favor of liberation. My aim is to create space to pause and acknowledge how things have changed in ways that once felt impossible, remind us that things can always be otherwise. It is inspired in part by Rebecca Solnit’s 2016 edition of Hope in the Dark and David Graeber’s 2007 essay “The Shock of Victory.”

The average education about Native American history when I was growing up in rural Nevada was pretty much “Indians helped the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving” or “savages viciously attacked poor defenseless settlers.”

Nowadays, while you may still hear such distortions and genocide-justifying lies from right wing pundits, broader public awareness of indigenous peoples’ continued existence and ongoing defense of their lands, stewardship practices and philosophy have blossomed in fire.

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Thin Green Line protestors in Tacoma, WA, source: Media Project Online

Books like Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry by indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer have been a sustained presence on the NYT Best Seller list, and the former was one of the most checked out books from the public library in 2024.

Even television shows like the FX dramedy Reservation Dogs (2021-2023), created by indigenous filmmakers Taika Waititi (Māori and European descent) and Sterlin Harjo (Seminole and Muskogee descent) has opened up a wider space in the media landscape for depictions of indigenous characters as something beyond crass stereotypes or the lie of the “Vanishing Indian.”

Reservation Dogs poster, source: FX

Films like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) have brought to the mainstream moviegoing public a powerful story of what colonization really looked like, depicting indigenous Americans not as “backward savages,” but in fact the prosperous land-owning class of the Osage Nation of modern-day Oklahoma — that is, until their family members are systematically murdered to give the white settlers access to exploit that land’s rich oil reserves through marriage to an Osage woman.

This character, Mollie Burkhart, is stunningly played by Lily Gladstone (Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Gladstone she has since used her platform to Executive Produce four films to date, centering on contemporary Native American stories of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (Fancy Dance), adolescence (Jazzy), confronting generational trauma of the residential school system (Sugarcane), and steps toward restoration of indigenous land and animal stewardship (Bring them Home).

The discussions of settler colonialism have gone from basically unspeakable heresy against the very soul of America to, it seems to me, pretty widely accepted in liberal to leftist circles at least (I mean John Oliver made the direct comparison of the US to Israel on a late-night comedy show). Reading Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’ An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States in 2024, I was struck by just how far the public sphere has shifted in narratives about indigenous people in just the 12 years since the book’s publication.

#NoDAPL

I trace a significant part of this recent shift to the 2016-2017 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access oil Pipeline, which made international news as indigenous water protectors and allies in solidarity occupied the historic lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe for 11 months through the harsh North Dakota winter. The protests and occupations were multi-pronged, including support from 87 indigenous nations, thousands of activists, legal scholars, and organizers.

NoDAPL protest march in 2016, source: IndianNZ

The NoDAPL protests brought the issues of indigenous tribal sovereignty, broken treaties, and especially the indigenous conception of water and lands as sacred to the forefront of public discourse about climate change and the United States’ history of genocide.

The backlash

With each of the social revolutions I will cover in this series, I must acknowledge not just the positive steps toward shifting public consciousness, but also the reactionary backlash which inevitably follows.

This has been twofold: the State repression against activists attempting to defend water and life, and culture war against intellectuals, educators, and artists. In the former, law enforcement has deployed all manner of violent tactics (borrowed from the anti-Civil Rights police violence of the 1950s-1960s), from water cannons to chemical weapons and rubber bullets, to siccing dogs on protestors. The legal repression escalated to such a degree that those occupying the Standing Rock Sioux reservation were given prison sentences ranging from a few months, up to eight years (for single count of property damage).

Not to be deterred, #StopCopCity protestors began occupying the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta in 2021 in the wake of Black Lives Matter Uprisings in 2020 (which I will cover in a future entry of this series), connecting struggle against anti-Black systemic racism and police with indigenous sovereignty. Again, protestors and those engaging in direct action were met with violence, most famously the murder of non-violent resister Tortuguita (whose death is still under investigation), which made international news spurred a week-long demonstration of solidarity. On the legal front, activists even in loose association have been charged with terrorism.

Tortuguita in Welaunee Forest in 2021, source: Twitter

The second prong of backlash against rising indigenous sovereignty can be seen in the response to revisionist histories like 1619 project (commemorating the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery upon its publication in 2019). The same year, President Trump signed into law the 1776 Commission, intended to enforce “patriotic education” to combat to “twisted web of lies” he claimed was being taught regarding systemic racism in U.S. schools.

This, paired with the overall withdrawal of funding from US education and the ongoing dismantling of US Department of Education by Executive Order is the result of long decades of psychological warfare waged by the likes of Steven Bannon and other right-wing political actors, cataloged brilliantly (and disturbingly) in Annalee Newitz 2024 book Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.

Paths forward

That said, I am encouraged by Grace Lee Boggs’ words in The Next American Revolution (2012), where she analyzes how radical, beloved community has risen in Detroit in the face of monumental dis-investment and violence by the State and Capital, creating autonomous networks of care and creativity — including in education. Alternatives to “patriotic” public schooling are cropping up, like the Boggs School, founded in 2013 on the philosophy and activism of the late Grace Lee and her husband Jimmy Boggs, over their decades of organizing in the Midwest city.

These types of schools center around education as a practice of freedom, in the tradition of Paolo Freire’s work in literacy in rural Brazil, Freedom Schools of the 1960s which opened up education to Black Americans to learn about their history and spark critical consciousness to take action in their society.

Education has long been a site of struggle for Indigenous peoples everywhere, with a major tactic of colonization being the suppressed of indigenous knowledge, language, and traditions — perhaps most famously in the Residential School System, part of the “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” philosophy of forced assimilation and destruction of indigenous culture.

Promising efforts in excavating and restoring indigenous knowledge systems are blossoming all over the world, like the School of Māori and Pacific Development at the University of Waikato in Aotearoa (New Zealand), established in 1996 and becoming the Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies in 2016. The emergence of these sorts of research institutions are heartening, as are the environmental remediation projects combining indigenous land stewardship and Western scientific methods.

Commencement Ceremony at the University of Waikato, source: Waikato.ac.nz

Indigenous peoples have been resisting erasure, colonization, and dispossession for hundreds of years. Now is the time of a growing movement to stand in solidarity and learn from one another if we want to make it into the next century.

Suggested Reads

• Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes
• The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save our Earth by The Red Nation
• Coexistence & A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

#writing #revolution #NoDAPL #indigenous #landback #MMIWR #abolition #education #essay #landback #native #youareonnativeland #activism #turtleisland

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