[intro music begins]
Crystal
abolition is for everybody is a podcast that tackles the sometimes-difficult conversations around prison abolition. I’m Crystal.
Graham
And I’m Graham. This season is about the media’s involvement in carceral or abolitionist thinking.
Crystal
How it uses narratives to impact, radicalize, and shift culture.
Graham
Just a reminder friends, though the title of this episode may give you some warning, remember that harm itself tends to create situations of alternate harms.
Crystal
There will likely be other painful topics brought up too. Take care of you.
[intro music ends]
Crystal Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of abolition is for everybody. Before we begin, we wanted to mention that Graham could not join us for today’s episode. But don’t worry, you will hear plenty of Graham in the future. And instead, we have one of our old co-hosts, Ra, who will be joining us today. But that being said, we can get started.
Ra Yeah. Thanks, Crystal. Today, we’ll be talking about copaganda and law enforcement in the media. We have a very special guest with us here today. Lewis Wallace. Lewis, can you please introduce yourself to us? And maybe tell us a little bit about copaganda like, what it is?
Lewis Wallace Sure. Hi, I’m so happy to be here. My name is Lewis Wallace. I am the abolition journalism fellow at Interrupting Criminalization, which is an organization that does research and organizing, run by Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie. And copaganda. I actually just remembered, this morning when I was writing about how we used to read this book called Make Way for Ducklings when I was a little kid. And the cops would come, you know, I love ducks, and I love ducklings. And I did when I was little too. And the police officer would come and help the ducklings cross the street in that book. And that, to me, is such a good example of the kinds of pervasive cultural propaganda about what police do and who they are, and what that institution is for, that starts when we’re young and kind of permeates through popular culture. And also news media. And news media is kind of the part of it that I’m working on.
Ra That’s very insightful. I haven’t thought about that book in years. That was one of my favorites. But you’re right. I mean, it shows up in so many of our children’s stories in general. And I think…so, I guess, can we make it as simple as possible, like, copaganda would be maybe? I don’t know. Do you have a stab at making it as simplified as possible? Like, how would you explain it to a kid reading?
Lewis Wallace Mmm. Yeah, I would say it’s like, to a kid. Well, I would start by not reading that book to a kid, even though I love that book. But…but I actually have had this experience with with kids who sort of say, what are police? You know, what are they for, and why? And I think that the way copaganda kind of operates is that a lot of little kids in this country are told, they’re, not all little kids, but a lot are told they’re here to keep you safe. They catch bad guys…
Ra Right.
Lewis Wallace And that’s kind of where this whole idea starts of like, there are good guys and bad guys in the world. And then what we, as a society do to deal with the quote unquote, “bad guys” is call the police, policing, pleasing police. And there’s so much imagery of police, like, doing good things that they don’t actually do, like helping ducklings. And like saving little kids from abduction, and, you know, stuff like that, that I think really gets under, gets under people’s skin and gets this idea out there that the main thing, the main roles of police are safety and protection, when actually the main roles of police are violence and social control. And, you know, police are actively causing harm, but we’re told that they’re protecting. And I think that plays out, like all the journalists who are writing stories about quote unquote, crime and policing now, like probably haven’t gone back and kind of done the work to think about “What messages did I receive when I was reading Make Way for Ducklings or watching, you know, cop shows on TV that come out as assumptions in the ways that the stories are written?” Like right now we’re dealing with a really, really widespread assumption that more police equals less violent crime. So the police advocacy groups and quote unquote “unions” and fraternal orders are coming out saying, “Oh, look, crime crime, bad guys, bad guys! So we need more money!” But there’s no proof. There’s no evidence at all that more money into and more numbers of police has any relationship to reducing violent crime, and yet they’re not even asked to prove that because the copaganda assumptions are so strong that copaganda has been so effective, that people just assume that that’s true, that that’s what police do.
Crystal Thank you for that. That was really helpful. I had never heard of copaganda until a few weeks ago when I attended the Don’t Be A Copagandist event. And I come from a neighborhood that it’s very, very heavily policed, and everyone around me, was always getting arrested. My whole neighborhood has been incarcerated at some point or is incarcerated now, including my brother. And the very first time that I kind of experienced copaganda was when my brother was incarcerated, when he was incarcerated himself, along with 30 other people were arrested that same day. And I remember seeing all of the news articles that were coming out, and what the media was saying on TV, and they put all 30 people’s mugshots for everybody to see. Actually, my sister found out about my brother’s incarceration because she was studying at the university through a friend because a friend saw the mugshot on TV and she texted her, “Hey, did you see your brother, you know, is on TV and was arrested?” And I remember just being so shocked at the things that they were saying about these individuals that I knew growing up, and just how untrue a lot of those statements were. And they were using very heavy words like criminals and violence, and this and that. And then ever since then, I was more careful. Because I fell into, I fell into it, too, whenever I saw a news article, you know, I got scared, I thought the cops were the answer. But then when that happened, I kind of made a promise to myself to be more careful from now on whenever I see and read stories. So do you have any tips for myself or for our listeners on what to look for when they’re reading a news article or when they’re watching TV? And how to catch just like these intentional things that they’re doing to make us believe that the cops are safety, and they are the people to protect us?
Lewis Wallace Yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m really sorry, that happened to your brother. And I’m also glad that you raise that example. Because it’s such a clear one of like, how copaganda really depends on dehumanizing the people that police are arresting, and the people whose lives they are ruining. And so I think there’s a couple of really clear ones to look out for, like that you just mentioned, like mug shots. Publishing mug shots, is really for the benefit of the news outlets who kind of encourage criminalization and abuse by doing that, and then for the benefit of the police who basically say, “Look, what we do we catch, quote, unquote, ‘bad guys'”, even though as we know, mug shots are just a picture of someone who’s been arrested, not convicted of anything. Anyone can get a mug shot that gets picked up for something, you know, so and then there’s all the language that comes along with that, like criminals, felons, violent criminals. Another one that I’ve I noticed that I feel really sensitive to is like news articles will identify people as males or females, like “There were three males arrested or three females”, like, that’s very dehumanizing, where like if they were talking about politicians, or rich people, they would say, like three men, or three women.
Crystal I never caught that.
Lewis Wallace And then also, obviously, there’s like the potential for transphobia there too, if, like you’re characterizing people based on their legal sex that you have gathered from a police report or whatever. So you don’t know how those people identify either. And all of that is contributing to dehumanizing people, like, for some reason and group of people who’ve been arrested as a group of males instead of a group of men or boys. So that’s one to look out for. I think even legalistic terms like suspect, and defendant, journalists often use those thinking that they’re just being fair. You know, so, because suspect suggests “Oh, the person hasn’t been convicted.” But I’ve seen it used a lot in really insidious ways, like somebody who has just been killed by police will be referred to as a suspect because the police are saying, “Oh, we thought he had a gun” or “We thought she was running from you know, something” or whatever and news article will kind of, unchecked, call that person a suspect when in fact someone else has just killed someone and it was a police officer. So you’ll also notice that like people who are arrested will be named and mug shots and all that. Cops, when they do something like shoot someone or beat someone up, they’re granted anonymity. The articles come out without them being named. And that anonymity isn’t always coming from the journalist. Sometimes that’s the, usually, that’s the police organization, the department protecting their folks. But journalists and journalism participates in that, right? By like, requiring that everyone be named involved in the story, except for the police officer who killed someone. And I think journalists should be fussing over that more, right, like where people who are, it’s our job to get information and spread it around, you know, fairly. And I think we should be making a really big fuss over how secretive police departments are while at the same time, they’re willing to give you pictures, names and whole history of people that they want to appear as criminals, so that they can appear as good guys who stopped the criminals. I think a lot of crime reporting doesn’t need to happen, like in the way that it happens. I think I would be especially attentive to like, trend stories, like homicides or up or like, you know, dangerous neighborhood like there’s a whole series in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about how dangerous certain parts of Atlanta are recently. And, you know, those kinds of trends stories I don’t, I don’t think they’re serving the individuals who are directly affected, because you know, if you feel unsafe in your home, you don’t need to read it in the news.
Crystal Right.
Lewis Wallace And but it’s telling other people like, “Oh, this is a criminal area” or “These are criminal or criminalized people” and justifying policing and abuse. And I think a lot of like rising crime, rising homicide, rising violence stories primarily serve that purpose. And they often are actually in response to police press releases, and not in response to communities saying like, “Hey, we have a specific concern here that we want reported on.” At the same time, that doesn’t mean that violence and harm should never be the subject of news reporting. But being really attentive to like, what the lens is. Is the lens, what the police are doing, their statistics, which are often bent out of shape to make them look good. Or is that storytelling and the desire for storytelling coming from the community that is saying “Here are things that could help us or make our community safer”? And usually, it’s the first one.
Ra That makes a lot of sense. Something that always strikes me about like, the whole concept of copaganda is that like, they don’t, they don’t need our help. Cops already have so much money and so much power, and immunity. So you know, when you were giving that example, about, like, the neighborhoods versus this other thing, I’m like, there’s already this huge discrepancy between these two communities. There’s this cop community and this neighborhood community, and to err on the side of the person with more power, more money, and immunity. It’s no, you know, which is in my brain kind of a concept of just like the ability to squeak your way out of any accountability. It’s just interesting that the lens that way. And thank you for giving, like specific examples of like, how you employ that in your work. And one thing, I guess, on that concept of accountability, one thing that I know in this space that a lot of people struggle with is like accountability for cops. Does, does that play into your understanding of copaganda at all? Like do you have a, personally, like an idea of what that looks like for you?
Lewis Wallace Yeah, I mean, I think that Mariame Kaba, especially and and Andrea have been really, Andrea Ritchie, who just put out the book No More Police, have been really courageous in naming how actually copaganda can come out in the form of, “Oh, we need to hold this person accountable, who is a cop.” And the assumption is that what accountability would mean is arrest, a trial, conviction, incarceration. And I completely agree with them that that narrative, while it may be like, powerful in terms of the immediate tools of power that we have available to us as organizers, it’s detrimental in terms of our narrative about what accountability actually looks like. Because we can’t transform our society and culture toward an abolitionist vision without actually changing how we understand accountability. And part of that, I think, is actually believing that it’s possible to stop cycles of violence. And we know that arrest, conviction, incarceration, do not stop cycles of violence; they continue them and worsen them. And so when we come out calling, you know, and often this is in solidarity with families and victims, like come out calling for the arrest and conviction of killer cops, it totally makes sense where that feeling, and that desire, comes from. And I would never speak out and say, like, “Oh, this person who has lost a family member shouldn’t be asking for this.” But I’m also aware that the way that that gets covered and talked about and sometimes the way our movements takes it up too, reinforces the idea that fundamentally that system works. That, you know, guilty people get arrested, convicted and incarcerated, innocent people go free, what we need is to just get the right people, including the cops, and then the whole thing will keep functioning and will work well. So, you know, that’s a that’s, I think, a question that’s at the tension between reform and abolition, like, are is reform possible? And what reforms are, you know, have abolitionist potential and those kind of tense, complicated questions, but in terms of the messaging and the copaganda, I actually think it really really benefits the police and their message to occasionally arrest a quote unquote, “killer cop” and charge and convict and incarcerate that person, because then they can say, “Look, this system works when there’s really a real bad guy, you know, even a cop, we get him.”
Ra Yeah, I love that we started this with Make Way for Ducklings and kids, because I think that my brain is like copaganda. So much, like the messaging of cops so much, is that hard line between good guys and bad guys. And that’s something we learned so early on, like, you are good, or you are bad. And there’s no, even when describing like other children in schools, you know, it’s like, well, that’s a bad kid in school. And she’s a good kid in school. And they’re, you know, and abolition is kind of just mushing that around a little bit more, and reminding people that we’re all humans, but it’s a really, it’s there’s a lot of cognitive, like dissonance in a brain, you know, to deal with things like that. Like I’m formerly incarcerated. And when people meet me, I think it’s, I think it’s difficult, like I can see in their body, it’s difficult for them to reconcile that they’re talking to someone who did time, who has multiple felonies. And it’s just like, it was almost a visible response, you know, where they kind of like…”How do I process this?”Because she’s supposed to be a bad guy. But I think I like her, so is she a good guy?” So I don’t know where this goes. And yeah, exactly, to your point. But the cop thing, it serves them to further that line, you know, to say that this was a bad guy. So pushing it up here on this very clear and easily divisible line just happens in such sneaky ways. Every time I listened to things like this, I’m like, oh, yeah, there’s that too.
Lewis Wallace Totally. Like I think about this all the time with, and Scalawag magazine does a lot of really great work on copaganda and popular culture. And our work is has been more about copaganda in the news, you know, news media. But on the pop culture front, like serial killer stuff, like all the true crime stuff, all the serial killer stuff, you know, it’s about the worst of the worst, like things that people do to each other, and all the things that when you’re like, “We need to abolish the police”, people are like, “But what about this tiny, tiny, ridiculously tiny percentage of things that happen in the world, that is serial killers? What do we do with them?” And that becomes the focus as if, like, 99.99% of what the cops are doing isn’t like, harassing people, responding to Animal Control calls, you know, pulling people over for having a taillight out, picking up small amounts of marijuana out of people’s jacket pocket, and so on. Which is, you know, as we know that that’s almost entirely what cops do is all that stuff. But if, to look at the TV, you would think what cops are doing is going around, like investigating, doing detective work about serial killers, you know, and, or about, like, the worst of the worst things that can happen and that, you know, that shit is scary. I’m not saying like that, it’s not real to harbor that kind of fear of violence. But I think it’s also evidence of the culture that we live in and of how dominant the policing narrative is in our culture. Another example, that Mariame and Andrea give in their book, in No More Police, that’s really, really good is about the book, Lord of the Flies, that a lot of people are assigned to read in, you know, middle school, high school. I think I read it when I was a little kid. And y’all are nodding. It’s like about these little kids who get left on an island. And then what plays out is that they basically all turn on each other. And they’re, you know, without adult supervision, it’s chaos. And it’s all, it’s about the deep evil that exists in all of us, even children and the horrible things that we would do to each other if we were just left, you know, in this anarchistic environment. And Andrea Ritchie has really made the point to me, and a number of times that I’ve heard her speaking publicly too, about how, like everybody being made to read that book is such a copaganda narrative. It’s like giving us this idea from very young that what we fundamentally are as humans is non-cooperative, punishing, punitive, and probably possibly evil people who will turn on each other, when in fact, we have lots of evidence from throughout human history and across many different cultures that the main thing people do when they’re in that sort of desert island situation is cooperate and help each other.
Ra Right.
Lewis Wallace And figure out collective responses and ways to work. But that’s not the required reading. The required reading is like Lord of the Flies. And I think that too, says a lot about our culture. And then you know, that that’s sort of been reflected in narratives about everything, you know, narratives about corporations, narratives about prisons, like this idea that we, that the main thing that we do is compete with each other and destroy each other, has a really deep psychological effect that then ends up reinforcing “Oh, what we need is like armed officers to control that.” When in fact, you know, there are all these examples of cooperation that are less likely to be covered, whether it’s like prison hunger strikes, and acts of solidarity that get covered so much less. All the organizing that we do in our communities, you know, you hardly ever hear about the unbelievable levels of cooperation that happen in community and mutual aid that happens in community. But you’re very likely to hear about like, this serial killer, the serial rapist, the stranger danger stories.
Ra Yeah, definitely. People ask me all the time about how dangerous it was for the officers or how endangered I felt in prison. And, and most of the danger I felt in prison came from the correctional officers. And I, last season, we had a few, a few people who did time around the same time and one who, who was down at the same time as me. And it’s funny when we talk about our experiences, it’s like, well, that was the day she made me tea. This was us folding twigs together to make a wigwam, we sewed a quilt, we help this, we, she taught me how to cross stitch. You know, it’s like these small, because that’s really what happens when, when you put a bunch of people together is yes, of course, there’s always a percentage of chaos. But a lot of that is prompted by that structure of punitive management, you know, in the spaces where there were no correctional officers overseeing it, there was peace. And I find that very similarly, on the outs, you know, out here, it’s in the communities that are over policed, there’s always a little bit more chaos and in the community, and I think we get the causation mixed up a little bit. And those percentages bother me as well. Because we never apply that to regular parts of our life. Like no one says, “Oh, you’re just going to open a soda can like that, what if it explodes in your face?” And it’s like, sure, that happens. But I’m gonna go ahead and just open the can and we’re gonna, we’re gonna go with what’s incredibly more likely. And we’re going to focus on that. No one’s like, “Oh, that bowl is inefficient. What if it spills?” Like we’ve all had those experiences. We don’t need to redesign everything, you know, let’s focus on designing it for what happens the majority of the time. And I think with the criminal system, as it is, the storytelling of what happens the majority of the time is just so false that we’re solving for this. We’re solving for the soda exploding in your face, and it just seems so bizarre some days.
Crystal No, it’s fine. That’s very insightful. I think one of the things that always, when I talk about copaganda and hearing you all talk, one of the things that never fails to shock me is how intentional everything is by the cops. Like once in a while arresting a bad guy. I recently learned that a cop, like a few cops kneeling or walking with protesters during the George Floyd protests is like, an intentional tactic that they use and that always kind of like surprises me that they actually go and do that strategically. Because for a really long time, I was that person that was like, “Oh, they didn’t know that three strikes was gonna, you know, do this. Didn’t know that enhancements gonna do this.” And then I learned that it’s all so intentional. So every time I hear about copaganda and hearing you give specific examples, kind of scary.
Lewis Wallace Yeah, it is kind of scary. And I feel like, yeah, it has helped me with my analysis of copaganda to really think about police as, as an organization, almost like as a corporation, you know, corporations have an agenda of profit, they have branding, they have, to some extent, a political agenda. I mean, the police are a little more complicated, because I think they’re a political organization and a corporation and they’re armed, you know, but they have branding, right? It’s like the blue, the thin blue line, and Blue Lives Matter. It’s recognizable everywhere. You know what it is, and they have messaging, and they have political power that’s very organized. And I think that helps me with like, staying alert to where copaganda shows up too is understanding that there are people who are, like you just said, actively thinking about how to promote the positive image of this group that’s very, very well funded and causing a lot of harm. And the reason that they have to promote the positive image is because of just how much harm they’re causing. But then you hear about these things that are supposedly benign, like, D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs, like, we had a cop coming into my school when I was in elementary school, and with a teddy bear, and, you know, talking to us about abstinence, from drugs, and that’s powerful copaganda. Like, that’s incredible thinking on their part of like how to get, you know, hearts and minds, and get into the schools and convince people that like, they’re keeping people safe. And of course, now we know that abstinence is a horrible way to help people avoid addiction, and the harm surrounding addiction. So that’s one thing, lots of evidence around that. And then of course, the irony being that what the cops are then going to do if you’re not abstinent is arrest you, which doesn’t help anyone get off drugs. And so they’ve, but they’ve created this whole Opposite Day like mindset that that’s what’s going to happen that A: abstinence from drugs is is the way, and B: when that doesn’t happen, that some kind of police based enforcement is helpful. And they have TV shows, and they have news articles, and they have all the things supporting that idea. But to think about what they’re…how they benefit and profit from that not as individuals but as essentially a powerful political slash corporate organization, you know, that they’ve, they have this massive membership that gets more jobs, more benefits, more pension, from advocating for their usefulness. And then they also function as henchmen for corporate interests. And so they, I think they have a lot of self interested support from that end, too. So then when it shows up in news reporting, it might seem benign, but it’s actually coming from a place of a lot of very organized and intentional power.
Crystal So aside from paying attention, you know, to everything you just said in this episode, is there anything else that we can do? Like I’m, I’m not a journalist, I’m not a writer, unfortunately. But as somebody who is like on social media, and who is system impacted, and has a lot of people in my community, who does buy into “police are safety” and don’t realize that they’re consuming this copaganda? Is there anything that I or the listeners can do in order to, I don’t even know if I should say, like, fix this, but at least like, you know, put a little pebble towards helping with abolition?
Lewis Wallace Absolutely. So there’s like the, so I’ll talk about the pushing back stuff. And then I’ll talk about the building stuff, because I think there’s a lot that people can do on both fronts. So we have this guide called, Don’t Be a Copagandist, that is for journalists, that we made for journalists and news reporters. But we also really want activists and community members to find it and use it and give it to journalists because it has like a pretty simple breakdown of “Here are the things you can look for that are copaganda”, you know, repeating police narratives unchecked, using passive language like “officer involved shooting” or “died at the hands of police” to describe police violence; publishing, quote, unquote, “crime statistics” unquestioned, fear mongering, criminalizing language like we talked about, publishing mug shots. So all of that is is in there with explanations that are geared toward journalists. Because, you know, I understand what journalists’ job is. It’s complicated. It’s hard, you’re under time pressure. But there are these things that you might not notice that are, you know, reinforcing this copaganda. So use the guide, spread the guide around, tell people about it. I really, really, really believe super, super strongly in local community members and activists contacting and pressuring your local media around this stuff. You would think that they get like complaints all the time, or people coming at them all the time. And that’s true to some extent. But honestly, when I worked in I worked in local public radio for several years, and when we got a complaint, any kind of complaint, it was actually taken quite seriously. And so when like, racist jerks would complain, it was like ai yi yi, you know. That we wouldn’t take seriously. But I wish that like the anti-racist, people would call in more and complain, because we would talk about it, you know, like, we were, and I was on that side in the newsroom, like, wishing that people would like, call and be like, “This is copaganda bullshit!” So that’s me coming from being, having been inside, you know, to outside. But I think we have more power than we realize over the narratives that come out in our local media, like I think campaigns to stop publishing mugshots, campaigns to shift the frame around all this copaganda stuff that come from community can be very, very powerful ways. Whether or not they move the journalism institutions, they will move individual journalists who, many of whom want to be accurate and want to be accountable to community; not all, but some. So just like not underestimating the power that we have, as members of communities to make a fuss when our local media isn’t serving us, especially public media, nonprofit institutions, that kind of stuff. Corporate media, TV is a little harder. But it’s all just people doing things, you know. And so I think those, those moments of pushing back with individual reporters and individual cases of copaganda can be actually be really powerful. So that’s another one. And then on the side of like, “What can we build together?”: I think there’s been something really powerful for me about reading Mariame and Andrea’s book, No More Police, and thinking about stuff like Lord of the Flies that I internalized when I was really young or the Make Way for Ducklings story. And really using those kind of awakening moments to provoke imagination, and open my own mind about what are the ways that we actually can be living and have been living on this planet and could be living right now. Not just in a utopian, faraway future, but right now, that aren’t based on the assumption that we’re all here to punish and harm each other, or that everyone is either good or evil. And really releasing those things, constantly checking and releasing those things in myself, for me is like an opening and a passageway into the side of abolition, that’s about what are we here to build together. And I think the the fundamental building block is strong, supportive community. Not necessarily safe community, because you can’t make safety be real. But you can respond to violence and harm in transformative ways that makes safety more likely next time. And so really focusing on like, what do we do in those moments where something really harmful is happening? And does happen? How do we show up for each other? What does that look like? And sometimes that harm is at the hands of police or at the hands of a landlord, sometimes it’s at the hands of a family member or a boss. And how we show up in solidarity matters so much, I think, to like re-tracking our own minds, and re-tracking our own visions, to kind of understand what a police-free world can be and has been and will be, and often is right now in the present. You know, we deal with crisis and harm all the time, outside of systems of policing and show up for each other in incredible ways. So another thing for anybody who’s doing narrative work of any kind: reporting, journalism, podcasting, the work y’all are doing is so amazing and important in this way. Like, telling the community stories that might seem small, but are actually huge, about just all the ways that we show up for each other. You know, like my neighbors and I calling each other when our animals get out. I have potbelly pigs, which is like funny because I have like, Pigs Against Policing is the name of the organization that lives in my backyard. But anyway, they sometimes they get out, and but it’s like small things like that. It’s not, you know, these aren’t, this isn’t serial killer stuff, it’s just like, oh, it’s actually really easy to have a network of people that you know, that live around you that call each other when your animals get out. And then actually telling those stories, like sharing those anecdotes about cooperation and communication. And sort of say, you know, where I live, that’s probably 10% of the police budget right there: animal calls. Just cut it out. That we could defund that part right now based on the neighborhood network that we have going. So that’s just one example. But I think that sharing those stories, those hopeful stories is a really, really important part of countering police narratives. And we do this work all the time of building relationship and building networks and showing up for each other and mutual aid and solidarity and feeding each other and bailing people out and you know, all of the things. And so just like turning our lens away from what the cops want us to believe, about how necessary they are.
Crystal I really appreciate you talking about the importance of community and having a pod and, you know, kind of ending the episode on a hopeful note. Because I know that when I think about copaganda, and just like I’ve consumed it my whole life, and just now in my late 20s, realizing this. And like how much it’s affected, our communities can feel, you know, like, we’ll never get past it. But I really, really appreciate you ending us on a hopeful note. And before we go, is there anything that you’re working on that you’d like our listeners to, you know, plug into, or, you know, keep an eye out? I know, after hearing you talk, I’ve learned so much. And I know listeners will be excited to learn like what else, what else you’re up to.
Lewis Wallace Yeah, so I have these office hours, which is really fun. People can go to our website at Interrupting Criminalization and find me on there and come to office hours to just talk about abolition and journalism. Anyone who has questions, thoughts, wanna just shoot the shit, I’m here for that. And that’s the main, that’s the big ongoing thing. And then we’re, you know, we’re going to be putting out more materials about the so called War on Drugs and copaganda, and looking also at some of the international implications, and how this sort of pro-cop, pro-military framing of the War on Drugs has justified US imperialism around the world. And so look out for those resources and other you know, trainings and events coming up. My big thing is working with people who are right at the intersection of abolition and journalism. So whether you’re an abolitionist getting into journalism or a journalist getting into abolition, I’m here to support those transitions and bridgings.
Crystal I love that because listeners say all the time that they wish they were in the room to talk about these topics, so go talk to you it’s during their office hours. That’s really exciting. I think I’m gonna stop by too.
Lewis Wallace Amazing! Yeah, it’s been super fun so far. I love meeting and talking to people and just hearing, yeah, hearing what people are thinking about. And I feel like you know, relationships are the fundamental unit of all the movement building. So having that time with each other is like so precious to me.
[outro begins]
Crystal
You’ve been listening toabolition is for everybody. Be sure to follow us @abolitionIs_ on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for regular updates.
Graham
If you want to continue supporting this podcast and our work overall, you can donate to support Initiate Justice at initiatejustice.org/donate
[outro continues]