“People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food, and education for all?”
-Mariame Kaba
“Hope is a discipline.” -Mariame Kaba
KEEP SCROLLING DOWN FOR SHORT AND LONG EXPLANATIONS
IN SHORT
UPRIGHT: Agreements & fairness. The process towards understanding complicated truths. And recognition of impact of actions. Ask what accountability in this situation might look like?
REVERSED: Punishments, and exclusion from community. An absence of accountability. The use of deceit, manipulation and fear tactics to govern groups.
AT LENGTH:
The scales of Justice in this card are many. The foreground features an antique scale that is weighing one nondescript substance against the weight of another. Directly beneath, a split image of dueling methods of justice.
Upright we notice the monument to western criminal justice pushing down from above. However in the scene below, a vibrant conversation unfolds about how do we change the conditions that enabled and made the crime possible in the first place. Below we are looking at a new approach to justice, one that is does the brutal work of healing from harm and being a person who does harm, rather that simply punishing and caging people as a way to solve social problems. This justice understands looks injustice in the face and exclaims, “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair” Let’s build communities where we don’t need to throw people in cages in order to feel safe.
In Reverse we see a court-house statue of ‘Lady Justice’, we look at her upside down as she towers over us. She holds a menacing sword in one hand, while her other hand is held just out of view, presenting a judgment in the form of the dangling scales. The statue’s legs stride confidently forward, having already come to a verdict on the matters at hand. She is ready to dole out punishments, and meditated consequences. This type
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of justice has full access to language of reason, righteousness, and the Law. We must consider the ways in which this kind of rationale for punishment covers-up unresolved fears, bigotries, or unrelenting drive towards continuing social domination.
IN DEPTH:
Transformative Justice is a series of methods and philosophies directed at changing social and societal structures. These processes can serve as alternatives to the criminal justice system, in addressing social conflicts and harm in our communities. Transformative justice is a political framework that focuses on community-building and collective solidarity against the repressive mechanisms of the state. This card finds particular inspiration within American prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba, and her work towards imagining and organizing towards justice that does not rely upon the violence of the police and state form as the ‘guarantor’ of safety and peace. She describes the false offer of punishment as justice aptly,
“Not only is it true that punishment doesn’t work, but also when you prioritize punishment it means the patriarchy remains firmly in place. And if I am at my core interested in dismantling systems of oppression, I have got to get rid of punishment. I have got to do it. But I want accountability. I want people to take responsibility. I want that internal resource that allows you to take responsibility for harms that you commit against yourself and other people. I want that to be a central part of how we interact with each other. Because well I don’t believe in punishment, I believe and consequences for actions that are done to harm other people. I do. I think boundaries are important. I think all these things are really important. But with punishment at the center of everything we haven’t really been able to address the other stuff that needs to happen. Because people fucking need to – they need to take accountability when they harm people. “
This is the kind of justice that is being called for in this card: a justice that recognizes that harm and violence doesn’t spring forth out of no where—it is a kind of insidious social tradition, that we pass on, again and again through the false remedy of fear and punishment. If we want justice, if we want healing across our relation to one another, ourselves and our environments, if this is the justice we seek, this is probably just the beginning of a process of transformation towards new ways of justly relating to one another.
FURTHER READINGS:
We Do This ’Til We Free Us. Mariame Kaba —- “Accountability is Not Punishment”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZEuPYJmTrk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-_BOFz5TXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqMxNiKQLHc
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